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There are numerous candidates for the title of “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.

As per a new book, however, that honor should go to a automated timber mill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.

“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required around ten sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within seven days.”

Thanks to their speedy mechanical saw, which turned logs to planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build vessels more quickly than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, financial and cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.

The Original True Industrial Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed its circular movement into vertical motion for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a sideway’s movement feeding the log to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each cycle.

“Each element seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so they acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting on every descending motion while moving with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic components.”

Which leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reimagine one of the basic ideas underpinning this historic machine.

Round and Up

Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion to vertical action. You have these items only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so the parts don’t collapse.)

I’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solution.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (less celebrated) contenders for the world’s most impactful creation.