Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary World

There are many candidates to claim the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, however, that title should go to the mechanised timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers working over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”

Owing to this rapid automated saw, which turned logs to planks with almost no human effort, Dutch builders could construct vessels faster compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and cultural supremacy across Europe and the world.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine

The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s initial true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted its circular movement to vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log ahead one precise increment per cycle.

“Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them in order that the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each descending stroke while moving on every upward motion. It was a remarkably clever application of basic parts.”

A fact that leads us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reimagine a key the basic concepts underpinning this historic machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a machine which converts circular motion to up-and-down action. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)

I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.