Can You Solve This? The Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Modern World

One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.

As per a recent publication, though, that title should go to a automated timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 sawyers laboring for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be produced within a week.”

Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, that converted timber to boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the world.

The First True Manufacturing Device

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s initial authentic industrial machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed its rotary motion into vertical action to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step each stroke.

“Every component was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them in order that the machine operated in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending motion while moving on every return stroke. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.”

A fact that leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reimagine a key the basic concepts underpinning this historic invention.

Circular to Vertical

Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion to up-and-down action. You have these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the parts do not fall down.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest invention.