Leonardo's car brought to life

[emad]

John Hooper in Rome
Saturday April 24, 2004
The Guardian

<snip>

It has taken more than 500 years to get from the drawing board to the showroom, but today the first working model of the "car" conceived by Leonardo da Vinci is to go on display at an exhibition in Florence. Eight months' work by computer designers, engineers and joiners has proved something that had been doubted for centuries: the machine sketched by history's most versatile genius in or around 1478 actually moves.

"It was - or is - the world's first self-propelled vehicle," said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, who oversaw the project.

Perhaps sensibly, humanity waited for the invention of steam power and then the internal combustion engine. Leonardo's car, 1.68m long and 1.49m wide (5ft 6ins by 4ft 11ins), runs on clockwork. The springs are wound up by rotating the wheels in the opposite direction to the one in which it is meant to go.

"It is a very powerful machine," Professor Galluzzi said. So powerful that although they have made a full-scale "production model", they have not dared test it. "It could run into something and do serious damage," he said.
<snip>
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1202272,00.html

[NMDemDist2]

1. no pics huh? too bad n/t

[emad]

2. Not yet... only pen and ink drawings of his helicopter...hehe..

wonder what the limmo will look like..

[booksenkatz]

3. Sounds like a Darda wind-up car... cool.

Where are the geniuses and inventors of today? Instead of wracking their brains trying to come up with new ideas for energy sources when the oil runs out, we get, instead... talking condiment dispensers... the Clapper... hair removal systems... thimble warmers... etc. etc. etc.

[the Kelly Gang]

4. I just love those Italian cars.