Are You Able to Solve It? That Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary World

There are many candidates for the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to a automated timber mill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.”

Thanks to their speedy automated cutter, that turned timber to planks using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels faster than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic dominance in the continent and the globe.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine

The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s initial true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed the circular motion into up-and-down action for the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same spinning motion into a lateral movement feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead one precise increment each cycle.

“Each element was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate these parts so they operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every downward motion while advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of basic parts.”

Which leads us to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas behind this historic machine.

Round and Up

Design a machine that turns rotary movement to vertical action. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the parts don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s greatest creation.