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One can find numerous candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The movable type. The combustion motor.

According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to the mechanised timber mill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Prior to mechanised sawing, building a modest merchant vessel required around ten sawyers working for three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be produced in less than a week.”

Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, which converted logs to planks with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly than anyone else, which sparked a century of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as artistic supremacy across Europe and the globe.

The Original True Manufacturing Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component transformed its circular movement into vertical motion to power the saw. A separate mechanism changed that same rotary movement into a lateral movement advancing the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood forward a measured step per cycle.

“Each element seemed modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine them so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing with each descending motion and moving on every upward motion. It was an astonishingly clever application of fundamental parts.”

Which brings us up to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.

Round and Up

Design a machine that turns rotary movement to up-and-down motion. Your available these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a stand, so that the components do not collapse.)

I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.