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One can find many contenders for the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a mechanised timber mill conceived through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before automated cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately 10 sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber could be produced in less than seven days.”

Thanks to their rapid automated saw, which turned logs to boards using almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to construct vessels more quickly than anyone else, which sparked a century of Dutch naval, financial and artistic supremacy across Europe and the world.

The First True Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true factory machine.” A windmill turned a gear. A single part transformed the rotary motion to vertical motion for the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed the rotary movement into a lateral motion advancing the timber to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per cycle.

“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to integrate these parts so they acted in a perfectly controlled order, sawing on every descending stroke and advancing with each return motion. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”

Which brings us up to the current challenge. I’d like you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind Corneliszoon’s invention.

Round and Up

Construct a mechanism that turns circular movement to up-and-down action. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a tube or housing into which a single the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can put things on a stand, so that the parts don’t collapse.)

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

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