🔗 Share this article Can You Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Invention That Shaped our Modern World One can find many candidates for the designation as “world’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor. According to a new book, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593. “Before mechanised sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel necessitated around ten lumberjacks working for 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than seven days.” Thanks to their rapid mechanical cutter, which turned timber to boards with virtually no human effort, the Dutch could build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic and cultural supremacy in Europe and the globe. The Original Genuine Industrial Device The inventor's sawmill, argues the writer, represented “humanity’s first authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part transformed its rotary motion to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per stroke. “Each element seemed simple on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts in order that the machine acted in a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending stroke while advancing with each upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of fundamental components.” A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the basic concepts behind this historic invention. Round and Up Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion to up-and-down action. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.) The solution returns at 5pm UK time with the solution. In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s most impactful creation.