🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Solve This? The Forgotten Dutch Invention That Forged the Modern Globe There are numerous contenders for the title of “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor. According to a recent publication, though, that title should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593. “Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated around ten sawyers working for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be manufactured within seven days.” Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, that converted logs to boards using virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build ships faster compared to any other nation, which sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic as well as artistic dominance across Europe and the globe. The First True Manufacturing Machine The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed the rotary movement into vertical action to power the saw. Another component changed the rotary motion into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment per cycle. “Every component seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every descending motion and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly intelligent use of fundamental components.” Which brings us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine one of the basic ideas behind this historic machine. Round and Up Construct a mechanism which converts rotary movement into vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve into which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components 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, please suggest (non obvious) contenders as the world’s most impactful invention.