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

One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.

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

“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a simple trading ship required around 10 lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber might be produced in less than seven days.”

Thanks to this rapid automated saw, which turned logs into boards with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to construct ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and cultural dominance across Europe and the world.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary motion to up-and-down action to power the saw. Another component transformed the spinning motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.

“Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate them in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each downward stroke and advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.”

A fact that brings us to the current puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind this historic machine.

Round and Up

Design a mechanism which converts rotary movement to up-and-down motion. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back later today UK featuring the solution.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the world’s greatest invention.