🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Solve It? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Forged our Modern World There are many contenders to claim the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine. According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593. “Prior to automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.” Thanks to this rapid mechanical saw, that turned timber to planks with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the globe. The Original True Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular motion into vertical motion for the cutting blade. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward one precise increment each cycle. “Each element seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each downward motion and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic components.” Which brings us up to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine. Round and Up Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion into up-and-down action. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.) The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer. Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates for the world’s greatest creation.