🔗 Share this article Can You Solve This? The Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Modern World One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The printing press. The combustion motor. As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a automated sawmill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593. “Prior to automated cutting, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten sawyers working over 90 days,” writes the author. “Using wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be produced within seven days.” Owing to their rapid mechanical cutter, which turned timber to boards with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct ships more quickly compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Dutch maritime, financial as well as artistic supremacy across the continent and the world. The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s initial true industrial machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. A single part transformed the rotary movement to up-and-down action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the log to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood forward one precise increment each cycle. “Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts in order that the machine acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing on every downward stroke and advancing on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.” A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the fundamental concepts behind this historic invention. Circular to Vertical Design a mechanism that turns circular movement into vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the parts do not fall down.) I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution. In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s most impactful invention.