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One can find many contenders to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

According to a recent publication, though, that honor belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.

“Before mechanised sawing, building a modest trading ship required approximately ten sawyers laboring for 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical amount of processed timber might be produced in less than seven days.”

Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that converted logs into boards using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders were able to build vessels faster than any other nation, which unleashed a century of Netherlands naval, economic as well as artistic dominance in the continent and the world.

The First Genuine Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s first true industrial apparatus.” A windmill rotated a wheel. One component transformed the circular motion to up-and-down action to power the saw. A separate mechanism transformed that same spinning motion into a lateral movement feeding the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism moved the log forward a measured step each cycle.

“Every component was simple on its own. Corneliszoon’s genius was to combine these parts in order that they operated in a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every descending motion while advancing with each return stroke. It was an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”

A fact that brings us up to the current challenge. The task is for you to reimagine one of the basic concepts behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a machine which converts circular motion into vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing through which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Assume it is possible to put things on a stand, so that the components don’t fall down.)

The solution returns later today UK time with the solution.

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the world’s most impactful invention.