Wait.
Leonardo Da Vinci Was Real?

Julien Reszka · 2010-02-14T15:22

I thought Leonardo in Assassin's Creed II was a made-up character. Then I looked him up.

1485 — Year Leonardo da Vinci sketched a working aerial screw, a helicopter prototype, 418 years before the Wright Brothers flew — **1485** Year Leonardo da Vinci sketched a working aerial screw, a helicopter prototype, 418 years before the Wright Brothers flew Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, Codex Atlanticus, c.1485; Wright Brothers first flight, December 1903

I am playing Assassin's Creed II and there is a character called Leonardo. He upgrades your gear. He reads the ancient pages you bring him and turns them into weapons. At one point he builds you a flying machine based on one of his sketches and you glide over Florence with it.

I assumed he was made up.

I looked him up. He was not made up.

Leonardo da Vinci was a real person who actually lived in Florence in the 1480s. He actually drew flying machines. He actually designed what is recognisably a helicopter prototype 418 years before the Wright Brothers flew. The list goes on:

An armored vehicle that prefigures the tank
An aerial screw that prefigures the helicopter
A solar concentrator that prefigures industrial solar power
A giant crossbow the size of a house
A robotic knight controlled by pulleys

He designed things for which the materials did not yet exist, which is why most of them were never built. The ideas were correct. The century was wrong.

The game has him helping Ezio build weapons from recovered ancient designs. That part is fictional. But the part where Leonardo draws machines nobody else can build yet? That part is real.

What strikes me is not that he was a genius. Lots of people are called geniuses. What strikes me is that he was working on problems that would not be solved for 400 years. He was not ahead of his time in the vague way people use that phrase. He was literally designing functional solutions to engineering problems that the rest of humanity would not arrive at until the 20th century.

The game made me want to look this up. I did not expect that from a video game about stabbing people in Renaissance Italy. I also did not expect to come away wanting to go to Florence. But here we are.

Myth: Leonardo da Vinci was primarily a painter — Reality: He designed functioning prototypes of the tank, the helicopter, the solar concentrator, and the armored car. Most were never built in his lifetime because the materials did not exist yet. — **Myth:** Leonardo da Vinci was primarily a painterLeonardo da Vinci's notebooks, Codex Atlanticus and Windsor Collection, c.1478-1519

Play Assassin's Creed II. It is a better introduction to Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance Florence, and 15th-century Italian politics than most things taught in school, and it is considerably more fun.
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Discussion

Are you working on something where the idea is right but the tools or conditions to make it work do not exist yet? If so, are you trying to force it now or building toward the moment when it becomes possible?
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