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One can find numerous contenders for the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.

According to a recent publication, however, that honor should go to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a modest trading ship required approximately ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, the same quantity of cut lumber might be produced within seven days.”

Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that turned timber to planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could construct ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, economic as well as cultural dominance in the continent and the world.

The First True Manufacturing Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, argues Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed the rotary motion to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism changed that same spinning movement into a lateral movement advancing the log to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log forward one precise increment each stroke.

“Every component seemed modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine these parts in order that they acted in a perfectly controlled order, sawing with each descending stroke while advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of basic parts.”

Which leads us to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reimagine one of the basic ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Design a mechanism that turns circular motion to vertical action. Your available these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which is a tube or housing through which a single the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so that the components don’t collapse.)

The solution returns at 5pm UK time featuring the solution.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s greatest invention.