🔗 Share this article Can You Crack It? That Forgotten Netherlands Creation Which Forged the Contemporary Globe One can find many contenders to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine. As per a new book, however, that title should go to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593. “Prior to mechanised sawing, building a simple trading ship necessitated around ten lumberjacks laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.” Owing to their rapid automated cutter, which turned timber to boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels faster than any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic and artistic supremacy in Europe and the globe. The Original True Manufacturing Machine The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed the rotary motion into vertical action to power the saw. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead a measured step each stroke. “Every component seemed modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending stroke while advancing on every upward stroke. It was an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.” A fact that brings us 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 that turns rotary motion to vertical action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.) The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution. In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s greatest creation.