Leonardo the Inventor

By Ludwig H. Heyenreich and Ludwig H. Heydenreich; Bern Dibner; Ladislao Reti

Book Overview

Illustrations throughout (185), primarily B & W drawings. Three essays: The Military Architect, Machines and Weaponry, The Engineer. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070286108
• ISBN13: 9780070286108
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The engineering and mechanical marvels of da Vinci

In my opinion, Leonardo da Vinci was the most talented person who ever lived. In fact, he would be famous if only his paintings were considered, or only if his inventions were considered and quite possibly only if his engineering activities were examined. In this book, his feats in the mechanical and engineering arts are covered. His drawings demonstrate that he had a high level of understanding of mechanics, probably beyond that of any of his contemporaries. Some of his drawings are descriptions of mechanical devices that were not re-invented for hundreds of years. There is a quote in the book from a person who thought their idea was original, only to find an almost exact duplicate in a da Vinci notebook. After seeing a da Vinci sketch reproduced in Life magazine, Dr. Preston Bassett wrote the following: "I must tell you my greatest shock in looking over the da Vinci sketches was the balls nested around a conical pivot. When we were developing our blind-flying gyro instruments in the 1920's we had the problem of designing a ball-bearing that would have absolutely no play. We thought we had an innovation with our conical pivot ball bearing, but it is a dead ringer of da Vinci's sketch. " Clearly, da Vinci was a master of gears, even incorporating the rate of wear into his designs. He clearly had a great deal of understanding how friction operates on surfaces On pages 146 and 147 there are drawings of many of the modern mechanical devices such as screws, toothed wheels, ratchets, gears, flywheels. It is amazing to consider that the notebooks that were used in this book are approximately twenty-five percent of his output. Leonardo also knew a great deal of physics. A modern engineer has judged his grandiose design for a bridge from Pera to Constantinople in Turkey 240 meters long and high enough so that ships with full sails could go underneath it technically feasible. His models for a series of gates to control the water level in a canal has been built for the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan and would have worked. Where Leonardo is concerned one could go on at great length about his achievements and in how many ways he anticipated the modern mechanical world. I strongly recommend that you read this book and I am sure that you will be amazed at the breadth and depth of his knowledge.