Are You Able to Solve This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Forged the Modern Globe

One can find numerous candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, however, that title should go to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than a week.”

Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, that turned logs into planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships more quickly than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and cultural supremacy in Europe and the globe.

The Original True Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary movement to up-and-down action for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log ahead a measured step each stroke.

“Every component seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine acted in a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every descending motion while advancing on every return motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”

A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts behind this historic machine.

Round and Up

Construct a machine which converts rotary movement into vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so the parts don’t fall down.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the planet’s greatest invention.