Leonardo da Vinci, engineer

Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo from Vinci) was born out of wedlock, in spite of this, he was a man ahead of his time. He was a true "Renaissance Man" skilled in many disciplines, sculpture, as an artist, engineering, anatomy, geometry, music and inventing. This blog is dedicated to his engineering expertise, and how these designs were ahead of his time. The following pictures are reproductions of his designs, most of which were not built at that time. They were only put upon paper in at least 15000 pages of manuscripts, many which have since been preserved in museums around the world. This exhibit is a traveling exhibit and is currently in the South Carolina State Museum where we viewed it. I will attempt to show a few of the reproductions that are on display, it is a must see! As Leonardo expressed it in his designs, all elements are constantly changing and were based on air, fire and water. He used these forces in his designs. As this picture shows his interest in flight in the 1400's way ahead of the first recorded flight. He designed a parachute of approximately 24' at the bottom and 24' to the top. When we consider moving objects by crane, this reproduction is quite interesting. It will lift but rotates by rollers placed in a circle. The lifting mechanism is block and tackle with a ratchet type lever to hold the load at a desired elevation.

A number of his designs had to do with warfare, because the noblemen of his time had the funds to support him in his engineering endeavors. He designed a tank with mounted cannon and a mechanism of motion by crank to rotate the wheels that are mounted inside. Each wheel was articulated individually by at least 4 occupants.

Leonardo designed a mirror manufacturing machine to create concave mirrors to concentrate light to set ships on fire. As you can see the grinding wheel is rotated as the glass disc is rotated in a horizontal movement using water to create the ideal grinding condition.

This is a mechanism to raise columns in the building trade. As you rotate the geared wheel you turn a screw that will bring a sled with the column base forward and the column is raised. This is quite a complex machine.

This mortar is raised and lowered by a worm gear, and is quite a feat of design for the 1400's. We use this for raising and lowering many machines today. Such as a screw down in the steel mill industry.

This is a calculator of sort, it measures distance by putting marbles in pockets in the top wheel and as one moves the machine the marbles drop into the hopper at an precise distance. This could be used in road construction and in the building trade, etc.

As one can see this is a chain and sprocket design and today we have used this in many machinery applications.

This is a bearing design, with the bearings separated by a spacer that will keep them in a precise spacing and the design can be used in rotating a column set on the top of it or used around a shaft. What else is new!

This is a bridge design that holds itself together with no fasteners of any sort and can be used in building arches, etc. I find this one very interesting! In fact, Audrey and I found this exhibit very interesting because of the time line between his insight and the actual construction of most of these machine applications.

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