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One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.

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

“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten sawyers laboring for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be manufactured in less than a week.”

Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, that converted logs to planks with virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly compared to any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as cultural dominance across Europe and the globe.

The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, was “mankind’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component transformed the rotary movement into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward one precise increment per cycle.

“Each element was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them so they acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending stroke and advancing with each upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”

A fact that brings us up to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which one of the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the components don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back later today UK featuring the solution.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders for the world’s most impactful creation.