Leonardo da Vinci's contribution to new technologies and modern civilization
Science
and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo
da Vinci (1452–1519) was an Italian polymath, regarded as the epitome of the
"Renaissance Man", displaying skills in numerous diverse areas of
study. Whilst most famous for his paintings such as the Mona Lisa and the Last
Supper, Leonardo is also renowned in the fields of civil engineering,
chemistry, geology, geometry, hydrodynamics, mathematics, mechanical
engineering, optics, physics, pyrotechnics, and zoology.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Inventions
and Other Contributions to Civilization
Leonardo
Da Vinci is a famed artist today due to his renowned painting of the ‘Mona
Lisa’. In the 14th century, people of Venice would have known him as an
engineer, people of Milan would have known him for his Last Supper, but only
the people of Florence would have seen his whole character. Da Vinci is known
as the archetypal Renaissance man, a man of “unquenchable curiosity” and
“feverishly inventive imagination”. Da Vinci created many technologies and new
innovations which were so advanced for his time and age that many scholars did
not believe him. He contributed to civilisation through three main areas: art,
science and engineering.
While the full extent of his
scientific studies has only become recognized in the last 150 years, he was,
during his lifetime, employed for his engineering and skill of invention. Many
of his designs, such as the movable dikes to protect Venice from invasion,
proved too costly or impractical. Some of his smaller inventions entered the
world of manufacturing unheralded. As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas
vastly ahead of his own time, conceptually inventing the parachute, the
helicopter, an armored fighting vehicle, the use of concentrated solar power, a
calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics and the double hull [1]. In
practice, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy,
astronomy, civil engineering, optics, and the study of water (hydrodynamics).
Leonardo's
most famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, is a study of the proportions of the
human body, linking art and science in a single work that has come to represent
Renaissance Humanism.
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