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One can find many contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.

According to a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a automated timber mill invented by Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.

“Before mechanised sawing, building a simple trading ship required approximately 10 lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes the author. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than a week.”

Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, which converted logs into planks using almost no human effort, the Dutch could build vessels faster compared to anyone else, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch maritime, economic as well as artistic dominance across the continent and the world.

The First True Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s first true factory machine.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component converted the circular motion to vertical action to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed the rotary movement into a lateral motion feeding the timber toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step per cycle.

“Each element was simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine them so the machine acted in a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward motion while advancing with each upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental components.”

A fact that brings us to the current challenge. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the basic concepts underpinning Corneliszoon’s machine.

Round and Up

Construct a machine that turns rotary movement to up-and-down action. Your available these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing through which a single the rods will fit snugly. (Consider that you can mount components on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)

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

Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates as the planet’s greatest creation.