Are You Able to Crack It? The Forgotten Dutch Creation That Shaped our Contemporary World

There are numerous contenders to claim the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.

According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to the mechanised sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Prior to automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than a week.”

Owing to their rapid automated saw, which turned timber into boards with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic supremacy in Europe and the globe.

The First True Industrial Machine

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted its rotary movement into vertical motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke.

“Every component was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that they acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending stroke and advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”

Which leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a mechanism which converts circular motion into up-and-down motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution.

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.