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One can find many candidates to claim the designation as “planet’s most significant innovation.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.

According to a recent publication, though, that title should go to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon during 1593.

“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a modest trading ship required around 10 lumberjacks laboring over 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of processed timber might be manufactured in less than seven days.”

Thanks to this speedy mechanical cutter, which turned timber to boards using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders could construct vessels more quickly than any other nation, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, economic as well as artistic supremacy in Europe and the globe.

The First True Industrial Machine

The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “humanity’s initial true industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed the circular motion to vertical action for the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the log toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke.

“Every component seemed simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts in order that the machine operated within a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every descending stroke while moving on every upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever use of basic parts.”

A fact that brings us to today’s challenge. The task is you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s invention.

Round and Up

Design a mechanism that turns rotary movement into up-and-down motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which a single the bars can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the components don’t collapse.)

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

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, please suggest (non obvious) contenders as the planet’s greatest creation.