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The Dream of Flying |
Page 5 |
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| Ornithopter- Leonardo da Vinci | ||||
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Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) is most famous as an
outstanding artist, but was also a scientist. During 1483-99 he found
employment at Ludovico il Moro (Sforza) in Milan. Here he spent as much
time with fortification- and engineering projects as with architecture and
arts. During these years he also made his most important investigations to
the problems of flight. Most of his work concerned ornithopters - flapping-wing flying machines imitating the flight of birds and bats. The major part of his designs was prone-positions types – the perhaps most famous is seen below. Leonardo was aware of man’s limited muscle force. His sketches show aircrafts where the pilot is working with both arms and legs to operate his aircraft. But this was not enough. His constructions would never fly. He made some successful tries with a light hang glider, but unfortunately never fulfilled it. The picture below shows Leonardo’s own sketch of the inner mechanism of the ornithopter. The picture at bottom gives an impression of the complete ornithopter with wings etc. fitted (based on an image at NASA’s website – thanks NASA!).
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| © Lars Henriksson |
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Updated 2009-05-13 |
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