Wireless cars, humanoid robots and a primitive computer: what else can Leonardo da Vinci surprise us with? The London Science Museum hosts an exhibition dedicated to the great genius. He is popularly known as the person who inspired the creator of The Da Vinci Code and the artist who painted the “smiling Mona Lisa”, but Leonardo da Vinci was a real Renaissance man - his interests were geology, geometry, astronomy, mathematics, botany, pyrotechnics, optics and zoology. Among many achievements, he was the first to explain why the sky is blue and wrote the phrase "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" 200 years before Newton was born.
But his artistic talent and understanding of science pales in comparison to a lesser-known side of the enigmatic genius: his inventions.
He is often, albeit mistakenly, credited with inventing the scissors. But his ideas were much stranger. From shoes for walking on the water to an airplane that resembles a giant mechanical bat and bridges like the magic stairs from Harry Potter. His intricate designs were both fabulous and compelling. After the plague devastated Milan in 1484, he even drew up plans for a utopian city.
For hundreds of years, his futuristic designs lay unpublished and unread, languishing in drawers and outhouses. About 700 pages of notes and sketches were rediscovered in the late 19th century, but da Vinci's inventions remained obscurity until Italian dictator Benito Mussolini commissioned a number of models to fuel pride in the nation in 1939.
On the 500th anniversary of da Vinci's birth in 1952, 39 more models were created in Milan using materials that were available to the master in the 15th century. They are now on display with others in the da Vinci exhibition at the London Science Museum: The Mechanics of Genius. The exhibition will run until September 4, 2016.
“In those days, engineering was practical, so Leonardo was extraordinary with his sketches. He has invented a new way of inventing, combining his artistic talent with his engineering skill,”says exhibition co-curator Claudio Giorgione of the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia (National Museum of Science and Technology) in Milan.
Tank prototype?
Promotional video:
If many of da Vinci's inventions were like dreams, then his armored transport project came out of a nightmare. A cross between a turtle and a spaceship, this monster was powered by eight men manually turning the pedals. Although this project was never implemented, it involved the construction of a metalized wooden structure on wheels, with cannons around the edges and a slot to allow soldiers to fire from the inside.
“This is a great example of Leonardo's unusual use of his technical drawings. They are much stronger than those of his contemporaries. He imagined the tank going on the ground, throwing up dust and picking up speed,”says Giorgione.
The tank was ordered by the then Duke Ludovico Sforza, who wanted to protect the city from invasion. “This is one of many hundreds of drawings of da Vinci's military equipment. It was his craft and bread."
It is also interesting that there was a serious flaw in the original design: the front and rear wheels rotated in opposite directions. If it was built as in the drawing, the tank would not have gone. Given his pacifist views and excellent understanding of da Vinci's mechanical forces, some historians believe there was no mistake, rather an act of deliberate sabotage.
Man of metal
500 years before the advent of C-3PO and the invention of artificial intelligence or computers, da Vinci created the "robot knight," a humanoid robot capable of waving, sitting, and even opening and closing its mouth.
While studying the anatomy of human corpses, da Vinci independently tried to understand how muscles and joints work together and move bones. His mechanical doll was designed to mimic these processes using a system of pulleys, gears and cables controlled by a hand crank.
Da Vinci's robots served mainly to entertain his wealthy patrons, such as the automatic lion he made for the king of France. The knight, on the other hand, was used for theatrical shows at parties hosted by Sforza.
Da Vinci never imagined that his blueprints would later be resurrected and incorporated into NASA's Anthrobot, a dexterous, anatomically correct robotic arm currently used to perform dexterous tasks on Mars.
The flight that never happened
After a memorable meeting with a kite as a child, da Vinci set out to learn how to fly. He devoted hundreds of notes to the anatomy of birds, buying them from the market and studying their wings. Then he let them go (he was a vegetarian).
In the end, da Vinci came up with the "ornithopter": an unusual flapping machine reminiscent of birds and bats. The 10-meter ornithopter was made of pine wood covered with pure silk. Because he knew humans were too heavy to fly with wings attached to their arms, the craft required the pilot, reclining, to activate the wings with his legs. Alas, as da Vinci later discovered, even that was not enough to create the right amount of lift.
Da Vinci never took off. But Leonardo davincii - a species of moth discovered in 1965 - can be found alive in Sudan today.
Living mind
Although cars appeared on the roads only at the end of the 19th century, our hero of the Renaissance was very close to their invention several hundred years earlier, when he was only 26 years old. Leonardo's open-topped three-wheeler was essentially a giant wind-up toy, powered by a spring that unwound as the wheels turned.
Remarkably, his car was also driverless. The spring could be programmed by adding a series of blocks to the gears. When it was finally built in 2004, the car had only one difference from the modern car: it only started perfectly the first time.
However, da Vinci did not intend to let him on the road. “The idea of making da Vinci's ideas modern, like depicting this cart as the ancestor of the car, came to Mussolini's mind. He wanted to represent the superiority of the Italian genius, but that's a lie,”says Giorgione. In fact, this car was another theatrical invention, as it could drive only 40 meters.
Mechanical calculator
It was only in 1965 that a sketch of this mysterious instrument was made public when a linguistics professor at the National Library of Spain came across two collections of manuscripts bound by Moroccan leather.
These 700-year-old pages contained da Vinci's notes on architecture, geometry, music, mechanics, navigation and maps. Lurking deep in the middle was a drawing of a car with 13 tied wheels and 10 numbers from zero to nine. It is not yet known exactly how the machine was supposed to operate, but it could possibly be the world's first analog calculator.
“Nobody was going to build these projects for sure; his drawings are difficult to interpret and often lacking in detail. They were just dreams. He had neither the time nor the money to make them,”says Giorgione.
Renaissance helicopter
Invented long before the advent of engines or strong and lightweight aluminum alloys, this vertical takeoff aircraft was well ahead of its time. Made of stretched linen sails and wooden masts, it looked more like a sailing ship than a modern helicopter, but his invention demonstrates how deeply da Vinci understood physical laws that would not be discovered for many centuries.
“This is an incredible blueprint that stands out from everyone else. He is carefully described by Leonardo and has a note with him that he made a small paper model,”says Giorgione.
The "helicopter" is believed to have been inspired by observing the spiraling descent of maple seeds; given enough spin, da Vinchin hoped the sails would carry him up into the air. Now we know that such a flying machine would never work. But the Italian genius may well have inadvertently invented the predecessor to the propeller, the propeller.
“He knew that it was impossible to make this structure - in its current form - rotate. He first came up with the idea of how propellers should work, but he did not develop it."
Perhaps da Vinci's sketches and drawings are hiding somewhere else in this world. Who knows, maybe he came up with something that we haven't invented yet.