🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack It? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Modern Globe There are many candidates to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor. According to a recent publication, though, that title should go to a automated timber mill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593. “Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.” Thanks to this rapid automated saw, that turned logs to planks using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural supremacy in the continent and the globe. The Original True Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed its rotary motion into up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a lateral movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step each cycle. “Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine them so they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward motion and moving on every upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental parts.” A fact that leads us to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine. Round and Up Construct a mechanism which converts rotary motion to vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts do not collapse.) I’ll be back later today UK with the solution. Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.