Leonardo da Vinci

Today I went to a Leonardo da Vinci´s Machines Exhibition at my hometown and I was totally impressed, how many useful machines Leonardo da Vinci invented.
Before visiting this exhibition, I just knew him as a painter, not as an inventor.
He invented things like pulley, cogwheel and how to construct a bridge.
Also impressing: His dream about beeing able to fly like a bird!
Today I wish I could upload more than one photo about his inventions, but the rule says, just one, so I selected a photo with a flight construction by da Vinci, because flying is a miracle for me, too.

Leonardo da Vinci, a genial and sensational all-rounder!

Quotation of Wikipedia about Leonardo da Vinci´s engineering and inventions:

During his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River, a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked. Leonardo's journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon.

In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On May 17, 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn.

For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c. 1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter and a light hang glider.[16] Most were impractical, like his aerial screw helicopter design that could not provide lift. However, the hang glider has been successfully constructed and demonstrated.


Today I do not have a special picture, but some interesting facts about a special man!