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There are numerous candidates for the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The movable type. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, though, that honor should go to a automated sawmill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.

“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a modest trading ship required approximately ten lumberjacks laboring over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within seven days.”

Thanks to their speedy automated cutter, that turned timber into boards using virtually no manual labor, the Dutch could build ships more quickly than anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands naval, economic and artistic dominance across Europe and the world.

The First True Manufacturing Device

The inventor's lumber mill, argues Dávila, was “mankind’s initial true factory apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. A single part converted the circular motion into vertical action for the saw. A separate mechanism transformed the spinning movement into a lateral motion advancing the timber to the blade. A geared mechanism moved the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.

“Each element seemed simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to integrate these parts in order that they acted within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each descending motion and advancing on every upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic components.”

A fact that leads us to the current puzzle. The task is for you to reimagine a key the basic concepts underpinning this historic invention.

Circular to Vertical

Design a mechanism which converts rotary motion to up-and-down action. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing through which a single the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the components don’t fall down.)

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

In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Rather, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.