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

According to a recent publication, though, that title should go to a automated timber mill invented by Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring over three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”

Thanks to their rapid automated saw, which converted logs to planks with almost no human effort, Dutch builders were able to construct vessels faster than anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic as well as cultural supremacy in Europe and the world.

The First True Industrial Machine

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues the writer, represented “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component converted the rotary motion into vertical action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.

“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending motion while advancing with each return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental parts.”

A fact that leads us up to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.

Round and Up

Design a mechanism which converts circular motion into vertical action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a cylinder or sleeve through which a single the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the parts do not collapse.)

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

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, please propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s most impactful creation.