Multidisciplinary genius, Leonardo da Vinci made some extraordinary
scientific discoveries and invented machines that were four
centuries in advance.
Leonardo's first interest was in the military
domain, studying arms and machines of war. It seems he was
the first to have had the idea of a submachine gun, at the
time of the siege of Florence by the pontifical troops in
1470.
Several of his projects never passed the
stage of carefully made drawings. It is in a memoir addressed
to Ludovic Sforza, called the Moor, that Leonardo depicts
his engines of war with drawings: tanks, bridges, cannon...
His studies extended to numerous domains, such
as hydraulics, mechanics, aeronautics. Therefore, after having
observed for a long time and studied their flight, Leonardo
constructed a sort of glider with articulated wings inspired
by the wings of a bat. He imagined also the principle of the
parachute and vertical elevation by an inclined fan blade,
anticipating the helicopter.
In the model gallery at Clos Lucé, the
40 machines of Leonardo da Vinci are exhibited, reconstructed
by IBM after the drawings of the genius, amongst which figure
the first car, the metric counter, the paddle steamer, the
double-hulled vessel...
Leonardo da Vinci, engineer