Leonardo da Vinci’s Self-Propelled Car

The world’s first self-propelled vehicle

• Leonardo da Vinci’s self-propelled car, a wooden three wheeled cart, is among the many thousands of sketches he made, now collected in the Codex Atlanticus (self-propelled car was drawn on sheet 812r), a thousand page collection of drawings that is da Vinci’s best-known work.

• His drawings of a self-propelled car was rendered around 1478 when Leonardo was 26 years old, however, like many of his drawings, it was never made

• Leonardo’s drawings of the vehicle were discovered in 1905 by Girolamo Calvi, who called it “Leonardo’s Fiat”

Background

Predecessor Vehicles

• Leonardo da Vinci was not the first to design transportation machines

• Italian painter and sculptor Francesco di Giorgio Martini had designed a four-wheeled human-powered vehicle before da Vinci’s design and named it "automobile” (it was also never built)

• However, di Giorgio’s vehicle was human powered and not self-powered

• da Vinci’s vehicle was world’s first self-propelled vehicle as well as the first one with programmable steering that could go straight, or turn at pre-set angles, but only to the right

• “If it was simply a spring-powered cart, it would not be that big of a deal, what is significant is that you can replace or change these cams and alter how it goes about its path—in other words, it’s programmable in an analog, mechanical sense” Rosheim (Vanderbilt)

• The purpose of the invention was probably to cause a sensation at events in the royal court

Solving the Puzzle• Since the discovery of da

Vinci’s self-propelled vehicle drawing in 1905, scholars have theorized about the car might work, some thought it was another one of his “impossible machines”

• Was not until early 1990s that Professor Carlo Pedrettie, director of the Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies in Los Angeles, realized that springs in da Vinci’s cart were not for power as earlier scholars had thought, but for steering.

• In 1993, Pedretti teamed up with US robotics expert Mark Rosheim to try to figure out how the fragments of da Vinci’s sketches fit together

• Biggest breakthrough came from a drawing Rosheim had of a karakuri, 18th century Japanese tea-carrying automaton

• The movement of the karakuri was determined by the placement of cams, small appendages on a wheel or shaft that engage a lever and convert rotary power to linear power

• Found small cam like protrusions attached to one of the toothed wheels in da Vinci’s drawing

• Power came from coiled springs inside the tambours

The Completed Model

• After the puzzle was figured out, researchers took eight months to translate da Vinci’s drawings to a one-third scale wooden model

• The design was so perfect that it moved perfectly the first time it was built

• Could travel up to 40 meters• Model was displayed from May

1 – June 5 2004 at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence

• Interesting that resembles NASA’s “Spirit,” a space vehicle used on Mars

Works cited

Renaissance machines are reborn. BBC News. October 19, 1999.

Leonardo's Car Brought to Life. Guardian Newspapers, April 23, 2003. http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/4-23-2004-53311.asp

L’automobile di Leonardo da Vinci. Institute and Museum of the History of Science. January 26, 2005. http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/automobile/

Lorenzi, Rossella. “Da Vinci Sketched an Early Car.” Discovery News. April 26, 2004.

Leonardo’s Machines. National Museum of Science and Technology. January 26, 2005. http://www.museoscienza.org/english/leonardo/galleria.html

Leonardo's Car Brought to Life. Guardian Newspapers, April 23, 2003. http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/4-23-2004-53311.asp

Rosheim, Mark. Anthrobot.com Ross-Hime Designs, Inc. 2000. http://www.anthrobot.com/press/article_leo_programmable.html

Vanderbilt, Tom. “The Real da Vinci Code.” Wired. November 2004: 210-214.