Are You Able to Solve It? That Forgotten Dutch Invention Which Shaped our Contemporary World

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

According to a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Prior to automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required around 10 sawyers working for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced within seven days.”

Thanks to this speedy mechanical saw, that converted timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster than any other nation, which sparked a century of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic supremacy in the continent and the world.

The Original Genuine Industrial Machine

The inventor's sawmill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed its circular motion to vertical action for the saw. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.

“Each element seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so they operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending stroke and advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.”

Which leads us to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts behind this historic machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion into vertical motion. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve through which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the parts do not fall down.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.

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