Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention That Forged our Modern World

One can find many candidates for the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

As per a new book, however, that honor should go to the mechanised sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required around ten sawyers working over three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”

Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, which turned logs into planks with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct vessels faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the world.

The Original True Industrial Device

The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a lateral motion advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the log forward a measured step per cycle.

“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts in order that the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each downward motion while moving with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.”

A fact that leads us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a mechanism which converts circular motion to up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the parts don’t fall down.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.