Are You Able to Crack This? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Shaped the Modern World

One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.

According to a new book, though, that title should go to a automated sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Prior to automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers laboring for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced within seven days.”

Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, that converted logs into boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial and artistic dominance across the continent and the world.

The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part transformed the circular movement to up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log forward a measured step per cycle.

“Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so the machine operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each downward stroke and moving on every return motion. This constituted a remarkably clever use of fundamental components.”

Which brings us to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas behind this historic invention.

Round and Up

Design a machine that turns rotary movement to vertical action. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing into which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the components do not fall down.)

The solution returns later today UK featuring the answer.

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s greatest creation.