🔗 Share this article Can You Solve It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention That Forged our Modern Globe One can find numerous contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine. As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593. “Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.” Owing to their rapid automated saw, which converted logs into boards using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships more quickly than anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the world. The First True Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory machine.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted the rotary motion to up-and-down motion to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed the rotary motion into a lateral movement advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step per cycle. “Each element seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each downward motion while moving with each return stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.” A fact that leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine. Round and Up Design a mechanism that turns circular motion to vertical motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the components don’t collapse.) The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the answer. Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders for the world’s most impactful creation.