Leonardo Davinci’s notebooks

Renaissance humanism did not see mutually exclusive polarities between
sciences and arts, and as impressive and innovative as
Leonardo’s artistic work is his studies in science and engineering,
recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and
drawings, which merge art and science. These notes were taken and
maintained through Leonardo’s travels through Europe, during which
he made continuous observations of the world around him. He was
left-handed and used mirror writing throughout his life. This is
explainable by the fact that it is easier to pull out a pen than
push it; By using mirror writing, the left-handed writer can
to pull the pen from right to left.

His approach to science was observational: he tried
understand a phenomenon by describing and representing it at its best
detail, and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanations. Throughout his life, he planned a large encyclopedia based on detailed drawings of everything. Lacking formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored the scientist Leonardo.

Da Vinci pioneered a number of ideas that later manifested themselves in modern inventions.

Few people have reached the level of notoriety of
Leonardo da Vinci. The astonishing success of Dan Brown’s novel
The Da Vinci Code documents the continuing fascination that Leonardo gives
Vinci clings to our imaginations, almost 500 years after his passing.
For many readers, the book has pushed the limits of fiction.
The book is often spoken of not as a novel, but as a story.
Leonardo da Vinci has achieved the rare status of being a true
person, who has become so famous that it can be used as a key
Fictional figure in a great commercial success.

anatomy

Leonardo began to discover the anatomy of the human body in the
once he was apprenticed to Andrea del Verrocchio, as his teacher
he insisted that all his students learn anatomy. How it became
as an artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses
at the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence. Then dissected
also in Milan at the Maggiore hospital and in Rome at the hospital
Santo Spirito (the first hospital in continental Italy). From 1510 to
1511 collaborated with doctor Marcantonio della Torre (1481
until 1511). In 30 years, Leonardo dissected 30 male and female corpses
of different ages. Together with Marcantonio, he prepared to publish
a theoretical work on anatomy and made more than 200 drawings. Nevertheless,

his book was published only in 1580 (long after his death) under the
title Treaty of Painting.

Leonardo drew many pictures of the human skeleton and was the first to
Describe the “double S” shape of the spine. He also studied the inclination
of the pelvis and the sacrum and noted that the sacrum was not uniform, but was composed
of five vertebrae. He was also able to represent the human being exceptionally well.
skull and cross sections of the brain (transverse, sagittal and frontal). The drawing
many images of the lungs, mesentery, urinary tract, sexual organs, and even intercourse.
He was one of the first to draw the fetus in the intrauterine position (he wanted
learn about “the miracle of pregnancy”). He often drew muscles and tendons of the
cervical and shoulder muscles. He was a master of topographic anatomy.
He not only studied the anatomy of the human being, but also of other beings. It is important
to notice that he was not only interested in structure but also in function, so he was
anatomist and physiologist at the same time. Because he actively sought
people deformed to paint them, he is also considered a beginner of caricature.
His study of human anatomy also led him to the design of the first known robot in recorded history.

The design, which has come to be called Leonardo’s robot, was probably made around the
year 1495, but it was rediscovered only in the 1950s. It is not known if an attempt was made
to build the device. He correctly calculated how heart valves alter blood flow, but
was not aware of circulation, as he believed that blood was being pumped to the muscles where
was consumed. A diagram Leonardo made of a heart inspired a British cardiac surgeon
to pioneer a new way to repair damaged hearts in 2005.

Inventions and engineering

Fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, Leonardo produced details
bird flight studies and plans for various flying machines,
including a four-man powered helicopter (which would not have
worked since the body of the ship would have rotated) and a light
hang glider that could have flown. January 3, 1496
he unsuccessfully tested a flying machine he had built.

In 1502, Leonardo Da Vinci developed a sketch of a single 720-foot span
bridge as part of a civil engineering project for the Sultan of
Constantinople. The bridge was intended to span a known entrance
like the Golden Horn. The bridge was never built, but Leonardo’s
vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on its
The design was erected in Norway.

Due to his employment as a military engineer, his notebooks also
contain various designs for military machines: machine guns, a
human or horse powered armored tank, cluster bombs, etc.
even though he later argued that war was the worst of human activities.
Other inventions include a submarine, a cogwheel device that has
has been interpreted as the first mechanical calculator, and a car
actuated by a spring mechanism. In his years in the Vatican,
planned an industrial use of solar energy, employing concaves
mirrors for heating water. While most of Leonardo’s inventions were
not built during their lifetime, the models of many of them have been
built with the support of IBM and are on display at the
Leonardo Da Vinci Museum at the Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise.

Your notebooks

Leonardo’s notebooks dealt with four main themes; architecture,
elements of mechanics, painting and human anatomy. This note books’
– originally loose papers of different types and sizes, distributed
by friends after their death – they have found their way to important
collections such as the Louvre, the National Library of Spain,
the Ambrosiana Library in Milan and the British Library.
The British Library has produced a selection from its notebook
(BL Arundel MS 263) on the web in its Turning the Pages section.
The Codex Leicester is Leonardo’s only major scientific work
in private hands. It is owned by Bill Gates and is shown once
per year in different cities of the world.

Why Leonardo did not publish or distribute the contents
of his notebooks remains a mystery to those who believe that Leonardo
he wanted his observations to be public knowledge. Technological
Historian Lewis Mumford suggests that Leonardo kept notebooks as
a private journal, intentionally censoring his work from those who
you could use it irresponsibly (the tank, for example). The writings
remained obscure until the nineteenth century, and were not directly from
value for the development of science and technology. In January 2005,
Researchers discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da
Vinci for flight studies and other pioneering scientific work
in previously sealed rooms in a monastery in the heart of Florence.

This is covered in great detail in Davinci’s own words in
[http://www.davincinotebooks.com]