Leonardo da Vinci The Engineer, Scientist and Innovator

Diving Equipment with Breathing Aparatus

The Engineer/Inventor

Today we would think of Leonardo's thought processes as the result of an unusually balanced mind - both left and right brains working in harmony, and overtime!  The right half of the brain governs the creative and non-verbal aspects of life, while the left rules logic and reason, utterly essential for any man who sought to understand the laws of nature - and impose his own will on it.

Leonardo had many hugely ambitious engineering schemes in mind, as can be seen from this letter he wrote to his patron Lorenzo de'Medici around 1480s offering his services:

'Most Illustrious Lord, having now sufficiently seen and considered the proofs of all those who count themselves masters and inventors of instruments of war, and finding that their invention and use of the said instruments does not differ in any respect from those in common practice, I am emboldened without prejudice to anyone else to put myself in communication with your Excellency, in order to acquaint you with my secrets, thereafter offering myself at your pleasure effectually to demonstrate at any convenient time all those matters which are in part briefly recorded below.

• Colossal Crossbow

  I have plans for bridges, very light and strong and suitable for carrying very easily, with which to pursue and at times defeat the enemy; and others solid and indestructible by fire or assault, easy and convenient to carry and place in position. And plans for burning and destroying those of the enemy.

• When a place is besieged I know how to cut off water from the trenches, and how to construct an infinite number of bridges, battering rams, scaling ladders, and other instruments which have to do with the same enterprise.

• Also if a place cannot be reduced by then method of bombardment, either through the height of its glacis or the strength of its position, I have plans for destroying every fortress or other stronghold unless it has been founded upon rock.

• I also have plans for making cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, with which to hurl small stones in the manner almost of hail, causing great terror to the enemy from their smoke, and great loss and confusion.

• And if it should happen that the engagement was at sea, I have plans for constructing many engines most suitable either for attack or defence, and ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke.

• Also I have ways of arriving at a certain fixed spot by caverns and secret winding passages. Made without any noise even though it may be necessary to pass underneath trenches or a river.

• Also I can make armoured cars, safe and unassailable, which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with their artillery, and there is no company of men at arms so great that they will break it. And behind these the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed and without any opposition.

• Also, if need shall arise, I can make cannon, mortars, and light ordnance, of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use.

• Where it is not possible to employ cannon, I can supply catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use. In short, as the variety of circumstances shall necessitate, I can supply an infinite number of different engines of attack and defence.

• In time of peace I believe that I can give you as complete satisfaction as anyone else in architecture in the construction of buildings both public and private, and in conducting water from one place to another.

Also I can execute sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also painting, in which my work will stand comparison with that of anyone else whoever he may be.

Moreover, I would undertake the work of the bronze horse, which shall endure with immortal glory and eternal honour the auspicious memory of the Prince your father and of the illustrious house of Sforza.

And if any of the aforesaid things should seem impossible or impractical to anyone, I offer myself as ready to make trial of them in your park or in whatever place shall please your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.'

Unfortunately, it seems Leonardo was unable for one reason or another to attempt many of these projects, or at least to finish them, although his advice was often sage and sound. His name also appears as one of the official engineers of the city state of Milan, so clearly he was thought of as an expert in the field. 

Today, of all his inventions, he is probably best known for his flying machines, although none could ever have worked. The basic flaw underlying their design was due to his erroneous belief that birds fly by beating their wings backwards and downwards. In fact, the feathers

Four Winged Flying Maching driven by a Man Standing Inside

'The great bird will take its first flight from Mount Ceceri, which will fill the universe with amazement.'

There is a legend that he persuaded one of his students to act as pilot, and that - unsurprisingly - the 'great bird' crashed, breaking the lad's leg.

In later life, he concentrated on fixed-wing craft, drawing heavily from studies of falling leaves and birds in flight, and although he still failed abysmally to get such a machine into the air and stay there, along the way he had managed to invent the first barometer and anemometer. He even designed a boat-like aircraft, in which the pilot used oars to move it through air, not water. Needless to say, it failed.

Design for a Helical Airscrew or Helicopter

Ironically, his very last known aeronautical ideas may have had some mileage in them. Just ten years before his death, it was a true glider, showing indications of controlled flight via the pilot who would move his legs and arms in certain positions in order to direct the craft.  

The First Parachute

500 years later, Adrian Nicholas of Britain tried out the parachute, as designed by Leonardo da Vinci, after a three-month building programme.

In beautiful weather, he finally jumped, using the parachute made of canvas and wood during a skydive over Mpumalanga in South Africa. Afterwards, he said:

'From my perspective, I just saw this canvas material billowing in the wind like the sails of an ancient sailing boat. And I just hung there in space. There was no oscillation, no rotation or gyration or anything. And I flew for ages and ages... You could see people in the fields all around waving and shouting. It was... absolutely wonderful.'

It landed perfectly.

However, Leonardo's design, which is based on the tent, was not discovered until the 19th century, when a parachute based on the principle of a parasol was already on the drawing board.

Way ahead of all his other designs - certainly from a modern perspective - was Leonardo's robot, thought to date from the 1490s. In fact, it was not until the 1950s that a Californian academic realised that certain odd sketches among the surviving 14,000 pages of Leonardo's notebooks may have been intended as the blueprint for a humanoid robot.  The Institute and Museum of the History of Science (appropriately based in Florence) then developed computer models that conclusively showed that the sketches were indeed for an anatomically correct mechanical man.

The robot was dressed in a suit of armour and may have been intended to beat a drum. 'He' is thought to have been activated by either weights or water.

Leonardo never ceased inventing - after all in his place and time there was much that cried out to be invented, for life was tough and very basic. He designed what we would call a submarine - although he became greatly agitated by the thought that it might be used to kill a great many people: a curious thought for one who blithely invented the assault tank, scatter gun and colossal crossbow with the same aim in mind - and even, although, controversially, the bicycle. (That could be a recent hoax.) And when spending long hours amid decomposing corpses during his anatomical investigations, he even invented a method of fastidiously keeping his finger-nails clean.    

Some of da Vinci's Anatomical Sketches

Working swiftly and with perfect concentration in ill-lit charnel houses at the dead of night, Leonardo was to add greatly to the science of practical medicine - for example, concluding that the major blood vessels branch out from the heart and not, as thought then, the liver - although he was still very much a man of his times.  He saw the human body as a microcosm of the universe, its various parts reflecting elements of nature, such as seas and the air. He was also not above a little prejudiced clowning - his sketch of an infant in the womb reveals it was a cow's uterus, and his drawing of the sex act shows the penis entering the vagina and encountering another penis...

However, despite these personal lapses, Leonardo's anatomical drawings were and are so perfect that many are still used in medical textbooks today.  

Want to Know More?...

Buy the Leonardo da Vinci eBook from Temple of Mysteries via Amazon

Copyright © 2010-2011 www.TempleofMysteries.com