🔗 Share this article Can You Solve This? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped the Modern World There are many contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine. As per a recent publication, however, that title should go to the automated timber mill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593. “Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured in less than a week.” Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, which turned timber into boards with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct ships more quickly compared to any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as cultural supremacy across the continent and the world. The First Genuine Industrial Device Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component transformed the rotary motion into vertical action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward one precise increment per cycle. “Each element was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that they operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each descending motion while moving with each upward motion. This constituted a remarkably clever use of basic components.” A fact that leads us up to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine. Round and Up Construct a machine which converts circular movement to vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so the components don’t collapse.) I’ll be back later today UK featuring the answer. In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.