Yesterday on the beach, today in the museum. A Leonardo da Vinci show at the Air & Space Museum. Not his art but his machines. More people know about his art and can name his paintings than can name his discoveries. Try it: name his two most famous paintings. got it? Sure.
Now: name his 2 most famous discoveries. Ah, more difficult. da Vinci was truly the quintessential Renaissance Man: scientist, technician, engineer, artist, mathematician (known today by the acronym STEAM), cartographer, innovator, entrepreneur and promoter. He wanted to know how things worked and how to make them better and this led him not only to painting great art but also to envision machines centuries ahead of their time.
The exhibit’s brochure states: ‘For the past 50 years the Niccolai family, a group of Florentine artisans have pored over da Vinci’s notes and drawings in an attempt to faithfully create replicas of his many inventions, relying solely on raw materials that were available in 15th-century Italy. The result is more than 90 artworks and machines, many of which are interactive, on display at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. The collection brings to life da Vinci’s most important and impressive inventions, including the bicycle, spring-powered car, hang glider, helicopter and for the first time his incredible robotic drummer.’ Though his ideas like the scuba suit, the hang glider and the parachute were sound, those 15th Century materials like ropes and wood probably wouldn’t have made them successful.
The inventions in this exhibit are organized into three categories: transportation, military and mechanical. and each machine is displayed with a facsimile of the da Vinci drawing that inspired it. I’m not going to show you all of the machines and how they worked but only to give an idea of the breadth of this many’s accomplishment. Here are 3 ideas that are used extensively today.
Here’s a double-hulled ship. Single hulled vessels were often punctured by cannon balls, other ships and then sank. This ship with 2 hulls could stay afloat. Simple idea - but no one else had ever come up with it.
Here’s a life buoy.
The sign states that it was made of waterproof leather and could be filled with air. In his words: ‘ Jump into the sea and allow yourself to be carried by the waves. . . Always keep in your mouth the air tube and if now and again you require to take a breath of air and the sea foam prevents you, you may draw a breath from within the apparatus.’
Here’s a simple machine - lift something with a pulley but what’s to keep it from falling? Well, this invention that is still used today: a toothed wheel with a flat bar that hooks in back of each tooth as the wheel advances. The bar locks in place so the wheel can’t move backwards and let the weight fall.
There were lots of other machines and inventions like a tank that could protect the gunners inside and could move just about any direction given pulleys and gears. Clever guy, he then included some design flaws so that no one could copy his ideas. Here’s one of his drawings of his tank.
Using his drawings, the Niccolai family designed this tank.
Here’s my favorite. He designed it to show how a human could use natural strength to lift heavy objects using pulleys. To me it looks like the world's first exercise machine. Sit on the bench facing to the right, push the foot levers and lift the heavy bags in back, pull the hand bars and lift the lighter bags in front. Cute. Was da Vinci into weight lifting - actually, yes, that was one of his major subjects.
I’ve used exercise equipment like this.
Here’s a ship with a scythe in front which could unfold with levers and gears to cut another ship’s mast.
But, I was surprised to see how he marketed himself and his inventions. Here’s a portion of a letter he sent to a king to introduce himself and his inventions.
Clever, clever guy. Excellent exhibit and the credit goes to the Niccolai family for all their work.
Afterwards we toured the rest of the Air & Space Museum. We’ve seen it before but there is always something new that catches our eye. Gary was on a carrier when he was in the Navy and they had a replica of the first carrier and one of the latest, showing the difference.
I remember flying oh so many years ago out to Washington DC to visit my aunt and uncle who lived out there. Remember these old stewardess uniforms? Oh, yeah, it's not just the uniforms that has changed, they are not called stewardesses any more.
And posters of airlines that have disappeared or been bought up.
I checked out the barnstorming exhibits about the pilots and planes released from WWI who went throughout the US demonstrating their skills and introducing flying to the general public. Many took people for flights, many showed off their skills but then there were the daredevils who risked all. These guys are ‘wing walking.’
This guy is balancing on the running board of a moving car, stretching to reach the ladder dangling from a moving plane.
The museum is awfully good but our attention today was on the da Vinci exhibition.
Afterwards we walked around Balboa Park, one of our favorite walks - but that's another blog.
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