🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation That Shaped the Modern World One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine. According to a new book, however, that honor should go to the mechanised timber mill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593. “Before automated cutting, building a modest merchant vessel required around ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber could be produced within a week.” Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, that turned timber into boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build vessels faster than anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic supremacy in Europe and the world. The Original True Manufacturing Device The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine rotated a gear. One component transformed the circular motion to up-and-down motion to power the saw. Another component transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the log forward a measured step per stroke. “Each element seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine these parts in order that they operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, cutting with each downward stroke and advancing on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental components.” A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind this historic machine. Round and Up Design a mechanism which converts circular motion to vertical action. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so the parts do not fall down.) I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answer. In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s most impactful invention.