🔗 Share this article Can You Solve It? That Forgotten Dutch Creation That Forged our Modern Globe One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine. According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a automated timber mill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593. “Before mechanised cutting, building a simple trading ship required around ten lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be produced in less than a week.” Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, which turned timber to planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and cultural dominance in Europe and the globe. The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “mankind’s initial authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component transformed the rotary movement into vertical action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward a measured step each stroke. “Every component seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine them so the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every downward stroke while advancing with each return motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.” A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine. Round and Up Design a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down action. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing through which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts do not collapse.) The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the answer. Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s greatest invention.