Are You Able to Solve This? The Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Forged our Contemporary World

One can find many candidates to claim the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.

According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a automated timber mill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Prior to automated cutting, building a simple trading ship required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for three months,” notes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.”

Owing to this speedy automated cutter, that converted timber to planks using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could construct vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial and artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe.

The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine

The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component converted its rotary motion into up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component changed the spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.

“Each element seemed modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate them so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing on every return motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of fundamental components.”

A fact that leads us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a machine which converts rotary motion into vertical action. Your available these components only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the components don’t fall down.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.