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There are many contenders for the title of “world’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The printing press. The steam engine.

As per a recent publication, however, that title belongs to the mechanised timber mill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.

“Before mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel required approximately ten sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of processed timber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”

Thanks to their rapid automated saw, that converted logs to boards using almost no manual labor, the Dutch were able to build ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, economic and cultural supremacy across Europe and the world.

The Original Genuine Industrial Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. One component transformed its circular motion into vertical motion to power the cutting blade. Another component changed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the log to the cutter. A ratchet system moved the log ahead one precise increment per stroke.

“Each element was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so the machine operated within a precisely synchronized sequence, sawing with each downward motion and advancing with each return motion. It was a remarkably clever use of basic parts.”

A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. The task is for you to reinvent one of the basic ideas underpinning this historic invention.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a mechanism which converts rotary movement into vertical motion. You have these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, that is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars will fit snugly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the components don’t collapse.)

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

Meanwhile, NO SPOILERS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) contenders as the world’s greatest invention.