Are You Able to Solve This? The Overlooked Dutch Creation That Forged our Modern World

One can find numerous contenders for the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, however, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Before automated sawing, constructing a modest merchant vessel required around ten sawyers working for three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber might be produced in less than a week.”

Owing to this speedy automated cutter, which turned timber into planks using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could build vessels faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic dominance across the continent and the world.

The First Genuine Industrial Device

The inventor's lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part converted its rotary motion into vertical motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the spinning motion into a lateral movement feeding the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step each cycle.

“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to integrate these parts so they acted within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each downward motion while advancing on every upward motion. This constituted a remarkably clever application of basic components.”

A fact that brings us up to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reinvent a key the basic ideas underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a machine that turns rotary motion into up-and-down action. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the components don’t fall down.)

I’ll be back at 5pm UK time featuring the answer.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.