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One can find numerous candidates to claim the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.

According to a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill conceived by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Before automated cutting, constructing a simple trading ship required around 10 sawyers laboring for three months,” notes the author. “Using wind-powered sawmills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than a week.”

Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that turned logs to boards with almost no human effort, the Dutch were able to build ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and cultural dominance across the continent and the world.

The First True Manufacturing Machine

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues the writer, was “mankind’s first true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion to vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a lateral motion feeding the log to the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the wood ahead a measured step each stroke.

“Every component seemed modest on its own. The Dutchman’s brilliance lay in how to integrate them in order that the machine operated within a perfectly controlled sequence, sawing with each descending motion and advancing with each return motion. It was a remarkably intelligent application of fundamental parts.”

Which brings us to today’s puzzle. I’d like for you to reimagine a key the fundamental concepts behind this historic invention.

Round and Up

Construct a machine that turns circular motion into up-and-down motion. You have these components exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or housing through which one of the rods will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a stand, so that the parts do not fall down.)

I’ll be back later today UK featuring the answer.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (non obvious) contenders for the planet’s greatest creation.