Are You Able to Crack This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe

One can find many contenders to claim the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.

According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers working over 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”

Owing to this rapid mechanical saw, that turned logs into planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships faster than any other nation, which unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.

The First Genuine Industrial Machine

The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component transformed its rotary movement to vertical action for the saw. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.

“Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate them in order that they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward stroke while moving on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”

A fact that brings us to the current challenge. The task is you to reinvent a key the basic concepts underpinning this historic machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a machine which converts circular movement into up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts don’t collapse.)

The solution returns later today UK time featuring the answer.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s most impactful creation.