Page 34 - All About History - Issue 58-17

Da Vinci: Was he Really a Genius?

Although the ey were all eventually acquitted, the
o
t
artist was cer rtainly arrested for at least a brief Inside Flying machines
was long enough to have considered
time. This w Da Vinci was fascinated with the idea
offlight,somuchsothatoneofhis
p
the punishme ents, which could vary from a fine to Leonardo’s codices is entirely dedicated to it. Inside
being burnt a atthestake.It’sperhapsnoshockthat there were numerous plans for various
g
the incident i ssaidtohavedeeplyaffectedhim. workshop types of flying machines as well as
n
o
Leonardo b observations on the way birds flew.
became a notoriously private man
his work and developed a habit of
c
dedicated to h Explore the innovative projects and
buying caged notes that consumed da Vinci’s life
n
buying caged birds only to set them free. Equally,
in the coming years he designed a machines
specifically for escaping a prison and another for
tearing the bars off a window.
Perhaps fearing that his reputation had been
blackened in Florence, he relocated to Milan in
1482. Aware Ludovico Sforza, the regent and later
DukeofMilan,wasinneedofamilitary engineer
after years of being under siege from rival powers,
he wrote to the noble, detailing ideas for portable
bridges, cannons and armoured vehicles. “I have
methods for destroying any fortress or redoubt,
even if it is founded on solid rock,” he wrote. He
only mentioned his skills as an artist and architect
as an afterthought.
“Leonardo also made
several stabs at drawing
flying machines”

Sforza became da Vinci’s prolific patron but the The
duke did not commission any of his military ideas. Vitruvian Man
In fact, his first job was to fix Sforza’s plumbing. Inspired by the work
After that, he designed pageants for the Milanese of Roman architect
Vitruvius, da Vinci’s
court and painted portraits.
Vitruvian Man
While this work was ephemeral, it gave da demonstrates his
Vinci more time to indulge his passion projects, understanding of the Revealing the
including machinery. As well as considering the proportions of the ideal human body
human body. It was da Despite conducting
relative merits of pistons, pulleys and ball bearings
Vinci’s attempt to relate dissections on animals
in the Codex Milan, it was during his time that man to nature and has to make his unique
he filled his notebooks with ideas for his most become one of his most observations, da Vinci
outlandish works of engineering like the armoured iconic works. was not satisfied. He
tanks and siege weapons he pitched Sforza. soon started to dissect
human bodies to
In recent years, engineers have tried to build
truly u understand the
them and have confirmed that neither would work. skeleto onandtheorgans
In particular, the gears inside the armoured vehicle of the human body.
were designed to work against each other. Some
have speculated that such a glaring fault must
have been intentional — perhaps it was a means of
protecting his intellectual property? An ardent few Warfare weaponry
choose to believe it was an act of self-sabotage by a Forapacifist,daVincicertainlyknewwhat
man who was a pacifist at heart. a weapon of warfare should look like. One
of his more fearsome ideas was for a giant
However, it wasn’t just the war machines that
crossbow, with its sheer size alone intended
didn’t work — da Vinci also made several attempts to strike fear in the hearts of enemies.
at drawing flying machines. The first of these
was the aerial screw, which some describe as
Leonardo’s helicopter, from 1483. It would allow
for four men to stand at the screw’s base, where
they would rotate until it summoned enough
power to lift off the ground. The sketches were
unclear as to whether the men were supposed to
stay on the contraption and ride it like some kind
of nausea-inducing fairground attraction.

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