🔗 Share this article Can You Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Contemporary Globe One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor. According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593. “Prior to mechanised cutting, building a modest trading ship necessitated approximately 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.” Owing to their rapid automated cutter, which converted timber to planks using virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to build vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial and artistic dominance across Europe and the globe. The Original True Industrial Device The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s initial true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part converted the circular motion into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood forward one precise increment per stroke. “Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that they acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each descending motion and moving on every upward motion. This constituted a remarkably clever use of basic components.” Which brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reimagine a key the basic concepts underpinning this historic machine. Round and Up Construct a machine which converts rotary motion to vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so that the components don’t fall down.) I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution. In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (non obvious) contenders as the world’s most impactful creation.