Can You Solve It? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Contemporary Globe

One can find many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.

According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.

“Prior to automated sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”

Owing to their speedy automated cutter, which converted logs to boards using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe.

The Original True Manufacturing Machine

The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component transformed its circular movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead one precise increment per stroke.

“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing on every downward stroke while moving on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”

Which leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.

Round and Up

Design a machine that turns circular movement into vertical action. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so the parts do not collapse.)

I’ll be back later today UK time with the answer.

Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.