Machines & Inventions

Leonardo da Vinci's designs for flying machines, war engines, hydraulic systems, mechanical devices, and architectural structures — centuries ahead of their time. These drawings from his notebooks reveal an engineering imagination of staggering scope: ornithopters with articulated wings, armored vehicles, giant crossbows, diving apparatus, automated looms, and bridge designs that were only built in the 21st century. Most were never constructed in his lifetime, yet many are now recognized as workable designs. The flying machines anticipate the helicopter and hang glider; the military engines anticipate the tank and machine gun; the hydraulic designs anticipate modern civil engineering. Presented with detail views of the mechanisms and Leonardo's characteristic mirror-script annotations, these pages reveal the Renaissance's greatest mind at its most inventive and practical.