Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was an incredibly imaginative man, who, although being way ahead of his time with his inventions and painting methods, was not actually influential while he was around. He created and wrote about hundreds of things that nobody else would of thought of around the time. He even had his own way of writing things backwards and concealing things in his notes so his ideas could not be stolen. These special “codes”, although still possible at the time, are things almost no-one else would think of. But he also came up with lots of other ideas that were way ahead of his time, and would not be possible for another 400 years or so.

One of his first established, but seemingly incredibly far-fetched, ideas was his idea for an underwater diving suit. He presented designs for what he called “an underwater army”, showing a suit connected to a device on the surface that would allow for breathing underwater. He even took into account the affects of water pressure and used a specially treated material so the suit would not absorb the water around it and become weighed down. He presented it to the Venetians to help them defeat invading Turks, but it was never put to use, and never was until recent times when tests showed that the suit worked, although they found some mistakes which they believed were put in his notes on purpose. Really, this invention didn’t influence European people to do anything, just realise how truly great he was.

Another great example of his genius was his design of flying machines. Leonardo da Vinci loved birds, and also dreamed of seeing the world from their perspective; he dreamed of flying. Although slightly vague, Leonardo drew up complex designs for many flying machines, including helicopters and gliders. These designs have been tested by people today and many have worked quite well, and perhaps his designs influenced people to create the first gliders. There is no proof, however, that this invention influenced people.

But one of his most ahead of the time designs was his design for a cyborg man, a sort of robot. After much study of anatomy and dissecting many, many dead bodies, Leonardo put together all his notes to create a replica of a human made from German-Italian medieval armour and had similar joints to real humans. It was able of several humanoid actions, too. Even though the actual things the robot can do don’t seem so amazing in comparison to his diving suit and flying machines, things similar to this invention would not be discovered or attempted for a lot longer than his others. This was probably slightly more influential, especially for the time, and made people think it was okay to dissect people other than convicts and criminals, and opened up the world of anatomy to the world.

Although da Vinci’s inventions were absolutely amazing, none were actually, physically invented, and most stayed in his notes. These weren’t available for a long time, and were kept with his assistant when he died, and passed from person to person for a very long time. Eventually, though, they came up, and a lot of the things we see around us are, although not obviously, influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. Although he had almost no immediate impact on civilization, his long-term impact is amazing, and he truly deserves the title of the world’s smartest man of all time.