🔗 Share this article Can You Solve It? The Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Forged the Contemporary Globe One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine. According to a new book, though, that title should go to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593. “Prior to automated cutting, building a simple trading ship required around ten sawyers laboring over three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.” Owing to their rapid automated cutter, which turned timber to boards with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the world. The First True Manufacturing Machine Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part transformed its circular motion to up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a lateral motion advancing the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the log ahead one precise increment each stroke. “Every component seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every downward motion and advancing on every upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever use of fundamental parts.” A fact that brings us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas behind this historic invention. Round and Up Design a machine which converts circular movement into up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts do not collapse.) I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution. Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s greatest invention.