🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack It? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe There are many candidates for the title of “planet’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine. According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593. “Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 lumberjacks laboring over three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber might be produced within seven days.” Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, that turned timber to planks with virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as cultural supremacy across the continent and the globe. The First Genuine Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component converted its rotary movement to vertical action to power the saw. Another component transformed the spinning movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward one precise increment each stroke. “Each element seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting on every downward motion while advancing on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic parts.” Which brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention. Circular to Vertical Design a mechanism that turns circular movement into up-and-down action. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or housing through which one of the bars 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 time with the answer. Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the world’s most impactful invention.