🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Shaped the Contemporary Globe There are numerous candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor. As per a new book, however, that title belongs to a automated sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593. “Before mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within a week.” Thanks to their speedy mechanical saw, which converted logs into boards using virtually no human effort, the Dutch could construct ships faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural supremacy across Europe and the globe. The First True Manufacturing Device Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted its rotary movement into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. Another component transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log ahead a measured step per cycle. “Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate them so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every downward stroke while moving on every return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of basic parts.” Which brings us up to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine. Round and Up Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement into vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the components do not collapse.) I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution. In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful creation.