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There are many contenders for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Before mechanised cutting, building a simple trading ship required around 10 lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, an identical amount of processed timber might be produced within seven days.”

Thanks to their speedy automated cutter, which turned logs to boards with virtually no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships faster compared to anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as artistic dominance in Europe and the world.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed its rotary motion into vertical motion for the saw. Another component transformed that same rotary motion into a lateral motion feeding the log toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment per stroke.

“Each element seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts in order that they operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing on every descending stroke and moving with each return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”

Which brings us up to the current puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts underpinning this historic invention.

Round and Up

Design a mechanism which converts rotary movement into vertical motion. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing into which a single the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so that the components don’t collapse.)

I’ll be back later today UK time featuring the solution.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please propose (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s most impactful invention.