Leonardo da Vinci Inventions

I have always been amazed at the complex inventions that have come about hundreds of years ago. Leonardo Da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian Renaissance genius who memorialized many of his of inventions in thousands of pages of notes and drawings.

Although it is said that he intended to order them all in a single volume, the pages were never put in the order that he wanted. And it is said that the 6000 pages that were saved are only about 20% of the total that he created. One can only imagine what was lost to all of humanity because those pages were not saved.

Most enduring to his legacy are his inventions and designs. In an attempt to share some of da Vinci’s genius a sampling of many of the machines that he drew have been faithfully constructed from Leonardo’s notebooks by a modern team of scientists and craftsmen in the heart of the Renaissance, Florence, Italy and now are currently on display in the exhibit called “Machines in Motion” in the Buffalo Museum of Science until August 28.

The uniquness of Machines in Motion lies in the fact that many of the mechanisms are life-sized and fully operational and combine a fascinating hands-on experience with an exploration of the principles da Vinci employed to create each machine.

Registered patent attorney, Brendan Lillis and I went down and experienced the hands-on feel for the forty machines based on Leonardo da Vinci’s visionary designs.

Because all the exhibits are hands on you can explore the range of mechanical principles Leonardo employed. When you compare Leonardo’s designs with today’s innovations you can’t believe he lived almost 5 centuries ago.

His ideas range from Flying machines, machine gun, parachute, automated printing press, armored tank, robot–and much more.