Can You Solve It? That Overlooked Dutch Invention That Shaped our Contemporary Globe

One can find numerous contenders to claim the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor.

According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple trading ship required around ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be produced within a week.”

Thanks to this rapid automated saw, which turned timber to boards using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships more quickly than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.

The Original True Industrial Device

The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. One component transformed the rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.

“Every component seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so the machine acted within a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each descending stroke and moving on every upward motion. This constituted a remarkably clever application of basic parts.”

A fact that leads us up to the current challenge. The task is for you to reimagine one of the basic concepts behind this historic invention.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a machine which converts rotary motion to vertical motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the parts do not collapse.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK with the solution.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.