🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Solve It? The Overlooked Dutch Invention Which Forged the Modern Globe One can find many contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor. According to a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593. “Prior to automated sawing, building a modest trading ship required approximately 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.” Owing to their speedy automated cutter, which turned timber to boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster compared to anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural supremacy across Europe and the globe. The First Genuine Industrial Machine The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component converted its circular movement into up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log forward one precise increment each stroke. “Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each descending stroke while advancing on every return motion. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of basic parts.” Which leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine a key the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention. Circular to Vertical Design a machine which converts rotary movement into up-and-down motion. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing into which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.) I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the solution. Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.