🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Solve It? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Contemporary Globe One can find numerous contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor. According to a new book, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593. “Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten sawyers laboring for three months,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.” Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, which converted logs into boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial as well as cultural dominance in Europe and the globe. The Original True Industrial Machine The inventor's lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s first true industrial machine.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part converted the rotary movement to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the rotary motion into a lateral motion advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward a measured step each stroke. “Every component was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate them so the machine operated within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each downward stroke while moving on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.” Which leads us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind this historic invention. Round and Up Design a machine that turns circular movement to vertical action. Your available these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve into which a single the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the components do not fall down.) The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the answer. Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the world’s most impactful invention.