Are You Able to Solve This? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped the Modern World

There are many contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.

According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Before automated sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers laboring over 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber might be produced in less than seven days.”

Thanks to this rapid automated cutter, which turned timber to planks with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the world.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine

The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part transformed the circular motion to up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed the spinning movement into a lateral movement feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the log ahead one precise increment per stroke.

“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing on every downward motion and moving on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”

A fact that brings us up to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a mechanism that turns rotary movement into up-and-down action. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars will fit 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 time featuring the answer.

Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s most impactful invention.