🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Solve This? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Forged the Modern Globe One can find numerous contenders for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine. According to a new book, however, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593. “Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a simple trading ship required approximately ten sawyers working over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.” Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, which converted timber to boards with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the world. The First Genuine Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. One component converted the rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the log to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log forward one precise increment each cycle. “Every component seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each downward stroke while advancing with each return stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.” Which leads us to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention. Circular to Vertical Construct a mechanism which converts rotary motion to vertical action. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so the components do not collapse.) I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the answer. Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest invention.