🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Solve It? The Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged the Contemporary World There are many candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor. As per a recent publication, however, that title belongs to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593. “Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a modest trading ship required approximately 10 lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be produced in less than a week.” Owing to this speedy automated saw, which turned logs to boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct ships faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the globe. The Original True Industrial Machine The inventor's sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part transformed the circular movement to vertical motion for the saw. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment each cycle. “Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts so they operated in a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every descending motion while moving on every upward stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.” Which brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine. Round and Up Design a machine that turns rotary movement into vertical action. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the parts don’t collapse.) I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the answer. Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the world’s greatest invention.