Academy Educational Da Vinci Series Paddleboat

Leonardo Da Vinci (born in 1452, died in 1519) was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant people of the Renaissance and is widely regarded as one of the most talented people in history. He was not only an exceptionally talented painter, author of such masterpieces as "The Lady with an Ermine" or "The Last Supper", but also an extremely prolific inventor and innovator. One of the areas Leonardo was particularly interested in was nautics, but also widely understood research related to the behavior of solids in water. These interests led to the development of a boat design with a de facto primitive, foot paddle wheel drive. This project assumed the creation of a wooden boat with the propulsion mechanism in the center of the vessel. The mechanism would be moved by a human through pedals (the analogy to a bicycle is perfectly fine!). The pedals, in turn, would be connected by a belt to a reciprocating device which would be converted into rotary motion and transferred to the paddle wheels on the sides of the boat. This would allow the boat to go on. In the propulsion mechanism of this boat one could also find a very primitive differential (differential). It is worth adding that the designs and sketches of this boat were probably created in the years 1487-1489 during Leonardo's stay in Milan.