🔗 Share this article Can You Solve This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention That Forged the Modern Globe There are many contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor. According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to the automated sawmill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593. “Prior to automated cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated around 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be manufactured within a week.” Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, which turned logs into boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct vessels faster compared to anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic supremacy across Europe and the globe. The First Genuine Industrial Device Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part transformed its circular movement into up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same spinning motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward a measured step each stroke. “Each element was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine them so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every descending stroke and moving with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.” A fact that leads us to today’s challenge. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts behind this historic machine. Circular to Vertical Construct a machine that turns rotary movement into up-and-down action. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.) I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution. In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates as the world’s most impactful invention.