Can You Solve It? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Shaped the Contemporary Globe

There are many candidates to claim the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.

According to a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a automated sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.

“Before mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be produced within a week.”

Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, that turned logs to boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch could construct vessels faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy in Europe and the globe.

The First Genuine Industrial Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part converted its rotary motion to vertical action to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same spinning movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the log ahead one precise increment per cycle.

“Every component was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so the machine operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every downward motion and advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”

A fact that brings us to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind this historic machine.

Round and Up

Design a mechanism that turns circular movement to vertical motion. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so the components don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s most impactful creation.