Are You Able to Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe

One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

According to a recent publication, however, that title belongs to a automated timber mill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Prior to automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around 10 lumberjacks working over three months,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured within a week.”

Owing to their rapid mechanical cutter, that turned logs to boards using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could build vessels faster compared to any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural dominance across Europe and the world.

The First Genuine Industrial Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “humanity’s first true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted the circular movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion advancing the timber to the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead a measured step each stroke.

“Every component seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine them in order that the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending motion while moving with each return motion. This constituted a remarkably clever use of fundamental parts.”

Which brings us to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s invention.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a machine that turns circular movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the components do not fall down.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution.

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest invention.