🔗 Share this article

There are many candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.

According to a recent publication, however, that title should go to a automated timber mill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Prior to mechanised cutting, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured within seven days.”

Thanks to this rapid mechanical cutter, which turned logs into planks with virtually no manual labor, the Dutch were able to construct ships more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as cultural supremacy across Europe and the globe.

The Original Genuine Industrial Machine

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part converted the rotary motion into up-and-down action to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning motion into a lateral motion feeding the log toward the blade. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead a measured step each stroke.

“Every component was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to integrate them so the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward stroke and advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”

Which brings us to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic concepts behind this historic machine.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a machine that turns rotary movement into vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or sleeve into which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)

I’ll be back later today UK time with the answer.

Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates as the world’s greatest invention.