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There are many contenders for the designation as “planet’s greatest invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The steam engine.

As per a new book, though, that honor belongs to the automated timber mill conceived through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in 1593.

“Before mechanised cutting, building a simple merchant vessel necessitated approximately ten lumberjacks working over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-powered lumber mills, an identical quantity of cut lumber could be produced in less than a week.”

Thanks to this rapid mechanical cutter, which converted timber to planks with almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build ships more quickly than anyone else, an advantage that sparked a century of Dutch naval, financial and artistic dominance in Europe and the world.

The Original Genuine Manufacturing Device

The inventor's sawmill, contends Dávila, represented “mankind’s initial true industrial apparatus.” A wind turbine rotated a wheel. One component converted the circular movement to vertical motion for the cutting blade. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a sideway’s motion feeding the timber to the cutter. A ratchet system shifted the wood ahead one precise increment each stroke.

“Each element seemed simple by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance lay in how to combine them so the machine acted in a perfectly controlled order, cutting on every descending stroke while advancing with each upward motion. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic parts.”

Which leads us to today’s puzzle. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas behind Corneliszoon’s machine.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a mechanism that turns rotary movement to up-and-down action. You have these components only: A rotating disc. Two pins. Two rods. A “sleeve”, which 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 fall down.)

I’ll be back later today UK with the solution.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please suggest (less celebrated) candidates as the planet’s most impactful invention.