🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack It? That Forgotten Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Modern Globe There are many candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine. As per a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593. “Before automated sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel required around ten sawyers working for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than a week.” Owing to this speedy automated cutter, that turned logs to boards with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct ships faster than any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the world. The Original True Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part transformed the rotary movement to vertical action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log forward one precise increment each stroke. “Each element seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward motion and moving with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of basic parts.” A fact that leads us up to today’s challenge. I’d like you to reimagine one of the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine. Circular to Vertical Design a machine which converts rotary motion into vertical motion. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the parts do not fall down.) I’ll be back later today UK time with the solution. In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.