Overview

As an inventor Leonardo was an astonishing genius. Although he lived over 450 years ago he foresaw the coming of advanced technology, and filled his notebooks with thousands of drawings for new machines and weapons, many of which anticipate twentieth century engineering techniques. We see him designing armoured tanks, steam guns, ballistic missiles, flying machines, parachutes, helicopters, underwater diving suits, water turbines, movable cranes, lifting jacks, gearboxes. Each of his inventions is a continuous source of wonder and excitement, displaying both Leonardo's awesome intelligence and an incredible anticipation of the future. Charles Gibbs-Smith and Gareth Reese, The inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1978

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Thomas Alva Edison, Harper's Monthly Magazine, September 1932

Leonardo Da Vinci has become a legendary figure for art and science historians. What makes him so interesting to twentieth century (and earlier) historians? The Mona Lisa is another icon of our current association with Leonardo. Although not necessarily regarded as a great painting, it basks in the reflected greatness of Leonardo. More to the point, why did we have to wait till the twentieth century to experience mechanical flight when Leonardo had a sketch invention of a helicopter 450 years ago? The clue to all this is that Leonardo was a great thought experimenter. In more recent history, Ernst Mach, the nineteenth century Austrian physicist and Albert Einstein are the names most often associated with gedanken ^[2.1]experiments, Leonardo certainly foreshadowed them by several centuries.