🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack It? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Forged our Modern World There are many candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine. As per a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to a automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593. “Prior to automated sawing, building a modest trading ship necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced in less than a week.” Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, that turned logs to planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships faster than anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, economic and artistic supremacy across Europe and the globe. The Original Genuine Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted the rotary movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component changed the spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step each stroke. “Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them in order that the machine acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing on every descending stroke and moving on every return motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic components.” A fact that brings us to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention. Round and Up Design a mechanism that turns circular movement to up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.) The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the answer. In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.