🔗 Share this article Are You Able to Crack This? The Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Forged the Modern Globe One can find many contenders for the title of “world’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine. According to a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593. “Prior to mechanised sawing, constructing a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks laboring for 90 days,” notes the author. “With wind-driven lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be produced within a week.” Thanks to their rapid automated saw, which converted logs into planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships faster than any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as artistic dominance in Europe and the globe. The Original True Industrial Device Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s first true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component converted its rotary movement to vertical motion for the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the log to the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per stroke. “Each element was modest on its own. The Dutchman’s genius was to integrate them so they operated in a perfectly controlled order, cutting with each descending stroke while advancing on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.” A fact that leads us up to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the fundamental ideas behind this historic machine. Circular to Vertical Design a machine which converts circular motion into vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or sleeve through which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so the parts don’t collapse.) The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the answer. Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.