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One can find many candidates for the designation as “world’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.

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

“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured within a week.”

Thanks to this speedy automated cutter, which turned logs into planks using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed a century of Dutch naval, financial as well as cultural dominance across the continent and the globe.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Machine

The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial authentic industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed the circular movement to up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log forward a measured step per cycle.

“Each element was modest by itself. The Dutchman’s genius was to combine them so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each descending stroke while moving with each return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”

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

Circular to Vertical

Design a mechanism which converts circular movement into vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a tube or sleeve through which one of the bars can slide snugly. (Assume you can mount components on a stand, so that the components do not fall down.)

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

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (less celebrated) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.