🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack It? That Overlooked Dutch Creation Which Shaped our Modern Globe There are many candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine. As per a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593. “Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a simple trading ship necessitated approximately 10 sawyers working over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber might be manufactured within seven days.” Owing to their rapid mechanical saw, which turned logs into planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster than anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial and artistic supremacy across the continent and the world. The First Genuine Industrial Machine Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends the writer, was “humanity’s first true factory machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component converted its circular motion into vertical action for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke. “Each element was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s brilliance was to combine these parts so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every descending motion and moving on every upward motion. It was a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental parts.” A fact that brings us to today’s challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the basic concepts behind this historic invention. Round and Up Design a machine that turns circular movement into up-and-down action. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that it is possible to put things on a base, so that the parts do not fall down.) The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the answer. In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.