🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged our Modern World One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor. As per a new book, though, that title belongs to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593. “Prior to automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks working for three months,” writes the author. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than seven days.” Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, that converted logs into planks with almost no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels faster compared to any other nation, an advantage that sparked a century of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic supremacy in the continent and the globe. The Original Genuine Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s first true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part converted its circular motion to vertical action for the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same rotary motion into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step each cycle. “Every component was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts so they acted within a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every descending stroke while moving on every return motion. It was a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental components.” A fact that leads us to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine. Round and Up Design a mechanism that turns circular movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which a single the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the components do not collapse.) The solution returns later today UK featuring the solution. In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s greatest invention.