Leonardo Da Vinci: The Life And Work Of Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was a well-known artist, engineer, and mathematician in the 14th and 15th centuries, who created and assisted in some of the most well known works of art, mechanical ingenuity, and theoretical mathematics. His works were equally important in his fields of study, with him discovering and portraying many different methods of his profession to increase realism, efficiency, and integrity. He had influences over many modern day technologies, like the parachute, steam turbines, and even thermal engines. Leonardo’s life was full of changes and moments of blatant curiosity, his childhood was an experience when he abandoned traditional education in search of answers, his adult years were used to develop his skills as an artist and

From a young age, Vinci was without a real mother figure as he was considered illegitimate and was left to experience the world on his own with complete control over how it influenced his thoughts (Vallentin 7). Leonardo left many records of his earliest memory that he could recall, which was of a kite landing in his cradle as a child and brushing his face with its wings and tail feathers. This experience stuck with da Vinci for his entire life, with him saying that he was skeptical of the supernatural so he couldn’t take it for a definitive, but was indecisive if it was an actual memory of his or a childhood dream (Rosci 21). As a young boy, Leonardo was impressed by nature’s vast ranging capabilities, such as the formation of rivers which he studied and participated in altering in his later years. He was said to have compensated for his lack of human relation with a respect of nature, as he obsessed over the prowess of nature and completely ignored anything that would distract him from admiring it, even school and a formal education. He would learn the necessities of education, but he would not push beyond that until he was older (Vallentin 8). In Vallentin’s book recording da Vinci’s life, he found that “All his life he was to regret his lack of a formal education”, even stating when he was older that anyone who hasn’t studied mathematics shouldn’t observe his works. His

An example of this is the use and creation of the steam engine, which is credited to James Watt in the 18th century. Although Watt used a complicated transmission system, da Vinci used what is now called a flywheel system, even though the engineers of the time believed it to be incompatible with the irregular strokes of a piston, but this problem was voided with his design of a flywheel in unison with a hand crank to steady the rotation of the piston block (Murtagh). He was also able to fix the issue of heavy loads breaking their gears, which would send the load to the ground and sometimes injure workers. To do so, he designed what he called an endless screw which had longer threads to grip multiple teeth on the gear as to ensure that a load wouldn’t repel downwards, but just be suspended in the air. As with many of his other designs, this idea was credited to Henry Hindley for making what was designated as the worm gear. An idea used in modern construction is his method of notching wooden beams to form a load bearing arch for bridges, which is used today by Swiss bridge builders