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There are many candidates to claim the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The circular axle. The movable type. The combustion motor.

According to a new book, however, that title belongs to a mechanised sawmill invented through Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Prior to mechanised cutting, building a modest trading ship necessitated around ten lumberjacks working over three months,” writes Jaime Dávila. “Using wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of cut lumber could be produced within a week.”

Thanks to their rapid automated cutter, which turned timber to planks using almost no manual labor, the Dutch could construct ships faster compared to any other nation, which unleashed one hundred years of Dutch naval, financial and cultural dominance across the continent and the world.

The First Genuine Industrial Device

Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, represented “mankind’s first authentic industrial machine.” A wind turbine turned a gear. A single part transformed the rotary motion into up-and-down motion for the saw. Another component transformed that same rotary movement into a lateral motion feeding the log toward the blade. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead a measured step per cycle.

“Every component was modest on its own. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so they acted within a precisely synchronized order, sawing on every descending stroke while moving on every upward stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of basic components.”

A fact that leads us to the current puzzle. The task is you to reinvent a key the fundamental concepts behind this historic invention.

Circular to Vertical

Construct a machine which converts rotary movement into vertical motion. Your available these items exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pegs. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve through which one of the rods can slide perfectly. (Assume you can mount components on a base, so that the components do not fall down.)

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

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Instead, feel free to suggest (non obvious) candidates as the world’s greatest invention.