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“Leonardo da Vinci, Scientist and Engineer” Norman A. Rubin (To Leonardo da Vinci, ‘art’ meant skill, ‘science’ meant know-ledge, and as such, they were not independent fields of human creativity. On the contrary, the combination of the two represented the essence of what came to be known as the ‘RENAISSANCE MAN’ -a man who sought to develop skills and acquire knowledge of human endeavor.) Today, almost five hundred years after his death, the genius of Leonardo da Vinci continues to astonish. In his time his contemporaries as a painter and sculptor, as well as a goldsmith regarded him. He was sought and functioned as a military engineer, an inventor of war machines; and in peacetime roles served as a competent architect and bridge builder. He even volunteered his services to the Venetians when they were threatened by the invading Turks; later he was employed by Cesare Borgia, the Duke of Romanga, in his military campaigns to conquer parts of Umbria and the Marshes, and he worked for the Florentine Signoria on an elaborate canalization project. (In order to defend Florence against Pisa, Leonardo proposed a strategic plan to cut the city of Pisa off from the sea by diverting the Arno River through a complex canal system. Although the canal was never built, centuries later a highway from Florence to the sea was built on the same route that Leonardo had chosen.) The achievements of this intellectual giant were perceived after the publications of his manuscripts and notebooks in the 19th century. Leonardo’s gifts were manifested. In addition to art, Leonardo excelled in the fields of music, writing, science, and technology. Leonardo is the quintessential ‘Renaissance man, a universal giant, equally brilliant in the arts as well as in the fields of science; his inventiveness and creativity seem to have no bounds. How could one person have carried out such extraordinary varied feats of the mind? The explanation provided by Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer was simple. Leonardo’s prodigious intellectual production resulted from his “genius” which was a “gift of God”. Far from being “acquired” through “human art,” it was “marvelous and divine” in origin, it came from “the heavens” which had “rained down the richest gifts - with lavish abundance” upon Leonardo. “The grace of God so possessed his mind,” Vasari wrote, and “nature favored him greatly,” that “in whatever his brain or mind took up, he displayed unrivalled divinity, vigor, vivacity, excellence, beauty, and grace.” By the 19th century, historians began to be wary of the Vasarian tradition of explaining creativity as the outcome of divine grace and heavenly gifts. Art historians, as well as historians of science and technology became interested to explain than mystify and inspire, to unlock the enigma of creativity, instead of further obscuring it. Far from growing out of a desire to belittle the accomplishments of great minds, their studies, on the contrary, can be seen as an attempt to understand them. FIELDS OF SCIENCE There appears to be no field of science and technology to which Leonardo did not make a contribution: hydraulics, anatomy, philosophy, geography, flight, medicine, weight, mathematics, geology, botany, astronomy, optics, mechanics, and naval engineering. “da Vinci described himself (when applying to Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, for the post of city planner -1482) as painter, architect, philosopher, poet, composer, sculptor, athlete, mathematician, inventor and anatomist.” (“Leonardo: Discovering the Life of Leonardo da Vinci”, S. Bramly) Leonardo’s goal as a scientist and technologist was to grasp the forms and laws of nature as they revealed themselves to his penetrating eye. He set them down in drawings and sketches, which, for him, were extremely important instruments for formulating and transmitting knowledge. His verbal description was inferior to graphic illustration, and he habitually presented his thoughts visually. Now wonder, he left behind infinitely more drawings, notes, and sketches than did any other Renaissance artist or engineer. In many of the sketches, we find beautiful illustrations with very few words. By doing so, Leonardo da Vinci laid the foundations for modern scientific and technological illustration. FLIGHT Among Leonardo’s varied field of interest, flight seems to be the most prophetic. The idea was neither new nor original; for example in Greek mythology Daedalus, the architect and sculptor, escaped from the Cretan labyrinth together with his son Icarus by attaching wings of wax and feathers to their bodies. There is no doubt, though, that Leonardo was the first to try to tackle the problems of flight seriously. He was the first to investigate the fundamentals of aerodynamics and the first to recognize that air resistance was essential to ‘lift’ power. Leonardo occupied himself with three ideas of flight; the first the ‘ornithopter’ - a flying apparatus with beating wings. The second was the use of gliders; and the third was the aerial screw, considered to be the predecessor of the helicopter. It is hard to believe that Leonardo, in his time, really thought that man, with a source of energy available in that period, could actually fly with one of those machines. (Only in much later years an airplane and helicopter was built according to Leonardo’s ideas.) “The movement is most praiseworthy, both for the case of motion and compactness of design...” (Codex Madrid) ANATOMY OF MACHINES The use of the gear wheels to transmit motion is very old. Prior to and during Leonardo’s time, gears were usually made from pinwheels and lantern drums (two discs connected by circular bars) and were used in large machines, such as mills, hoists and cranes. Leonardo da Vinci was the first to study gear wheels and gearing in great detail. He sought the best possible shape for gear teeth in order to minimize frictional resistance, and he studied their strength. He was obsessed with problems related to the conversion of motion. Leonardo was particularly fascinated by combinations of gear wheels, and by the conversion of reciprocal to rotary motion and vice versa. He studied the use of reduction gears to ease the operations of machines. Leonardo drew scores of ingenious combinations of gears, linkages, cams and ratchets for transmitting and modifying mechanical movement. For example, by combining a treadle, a crank, and a flywheel, he was the first to design a proper lathe. Leonardo did not invent the screw, but he was first to investigate the potential of this device. The power and the graceful movement of the screw fascinated him. Leonardo designed equipment to test its strength and power. As we know, the simple screw has many useful devices in use today. The list of his accomplishments continues with different elements of machines in which Leonardo studied - screws, bearings, pins, pistons, pipes, gear wheels, chains, pulleys, etc.. He saw the importance of hydrodynamics because it was, in his time, the chief source of sustained power for driving machinery. Few of his many drawings are of labor saving devices that result in greater efficiency, accuracy and a higher rate of output. During Leonardo’s time, production was carried out mainly in small workshops. Many men were employed and labor was basically manual. In larger workshops animal power and the energy of the water wheel was used. By using pulleys, gears or ball bearings, Leonardo was able to design many machines that could replace hand labor. It was his vision of automation. THE GIFT AND DEBT Leonardo da Vinci intended to produce his body of notes (about half of which has survived) in a number of books on a variety of his scientific subjects (1). Leonardo knew quite well that his books could bring immortality as he had proof from his own library on the endurance of authors, ancient and modern. Leonardo never completed his literary efforts; not a single manuscript was prepared in final form for publication; the enormous body of writing and plans for books remained in a state of ‘non-finito’. Before his death (May 1519) Leonardo Da Vinci bequeath all his possessions to his friend and follower, Francesco Melzi. Melzi tried to classify the notes and prepare them for publication. The manuscript Trattato Della Pittura (Treatise on the Art of Painting) was acquired unfinished by the Duke of Urbino and then by the Vatican. Catalogued as Codex Urbinas Latinus it was published in 1651. Unfortunately on the death of Francesco Melzi, his son, who had no interest in the manuscripts, put the remainder randomly in a chest of drawers. But fate in the guise of the grand duke of Tuscany, the sculptor Pompeo Leoni of Milan and the Milanese monk Mazenta, the papers were acquired, catalogued and published. Leonardo’s notebooks and manuscripts became much sought-after items from the beginning of the 18th century; Lord Arundel acquired a large quantity for himself and for King Charles I of England. Some were sold in the late 19th century to a John Forester, who bequeathed them to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The Codex Alanticus remains in the Institute de France. Some of the important ones were discovered in the National Library of Spain in 1965; they are known as Codex Madrid I and Codex Madrid II. “If you wish to gain knowledge of the form of things, begin with the detail and only move from one detail to another when you have fixed the first firmly in your memory and become well acquainted with it..” Leonardo da Vinci - Notes on ‘Rules’ and ‘Powers’. NOTES: (1) Leonardo da Vinci recorded his scientific work in notebooks and codices written from right to left in mirror writing. It was far from being an attempt at secrecy, as it was assumed. His mirror writing was no barrier whatsoever to reading his papers, as all that one needs is a mirror. The probable explanation to his practice of mirror writing was that Leonardo was ‘left-handed’ on whom the ‘normal’ way is not forced. (2) Today, Leonardo manuscripts are dispersed among many libraries, museums and private collections. The only important notebook still in private collection is the ‘Codex Leicester’, which was sold to the Hammer Foundation for over two million English pounds. Microsoft’s Bill Gates for approx. U.S. thirty-five million recently purchased the Codex. SIDEBAR - BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, in the village of Vinci, in the Tuscany province of Italy. He was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero, a notary and a landlord. Little is known of his early childhood. In the year 1466, Leonardo moved to Florence with his father, who had been appointed notary to the Signoria, the governing body of the city. As an illegitimate child, all careers of any consequences were closed to him; even the universities were barred to him. He would have to seek his fortune in the army, literature or the arts. In 1467, Leonardo da Vinci entered the renowned workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, where he was to spend about 13 years of his life. After completing a normal training program, he was accepted, at the age of 20, into the painter’s guild of Florence. In spite of being recognized as a master of his trade, Leonardo remained in the workshop for several more years as Verrocchio’s collaborator. While learning his trade, he devoted a great deal of time to acquiring knowledge because, as he wrote, “the desire to know is natural to good men..” Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps the most famous of all artists, and his paintings are familiar to millions of art lovers. He is best known for his ‘Last Supper’ in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan and his ‘Mona Lisa’ in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519. He was buried in the little church of St. Florentine in Amboise. his drawings almost without alteration and correct in principal. They depicted his solutions to complex mechanical problems in variety of fields, the basis of which have been used in later machines and projects. The exhibition at the Israel National Museum of Science highlighted Leonardo da Vinci’s genius in the fields of mechanics and hydraulics, which signifies his original ideas. Visitors were able forge a link between the Renaissance and the present; and were given the opportunity to grasp Leonardo’s thoughts and to contemplate his ideas.
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REFERENCE: (1) Catalogue of the exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci, Scientist and Engineer” Edited by Zvi Dori and Rifca Hashimshony. - The Israel National Museum of Science, Haifa. (2) Notes from Codex Madrid and Codex Atlanticus (3) ”Discovering the Life of Leonardo da Vinci” - S. Bramly (4) “Leonardo’s Rules of Painting’ - James Beck (Oxford) (5) Pears Cyclopedia 93rd edition - Edited by Christopher Cook, the Chaucer Press, Suffolk, England
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