101 Things You Didn't Know about Da Vinci by Cynthia Phillips & Shana Priwer

Author:Cynthia Phillips & Shana Priwer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adams Media

54

Before Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Renaissance inventors were at a crossroads, whether they knew it or not. Europe was slowly emerging from the Dark Ages, and there had already been several significant inventions. At the same time, some of history’s greatest achievements were yet to come. Leonardo, living fairly early in the Renaissance period, was on the leading edge of the era’s innovation. Against what backdrop can we view his inventions?

One of the most significant inventions of the Renaissance was the mechanical timepiece. Though Casio calculator wristwatches wouldn’t come along for a while yet, society was beginning to place more importance on an easy way to tell the time. Clocks were first created in the 1300s, but it was not until the 1580s that Galileo (a scientist and researcher from Florence) developed the idea for a pendulum. It wasn’t until the 1600s, long after Leonardo’s death, that the concept of the clock was further mechanized with the introduction of gears and screws.

Certainly, Leonardo and his contemporaries didn’t have access to most of the modern conveniences we take for granted today. One of the things most noticeably lacking was electricity, which was not discovered until the seventeenth century and not widely used until the late 1800s. The first standardized fuel type was probably fish oil used by ancient Romans and those who came after them, so in the absence of electric lighting, fuel-driven lanterns would have been a possibility for Leonardo. Candles, torches, and lamps were other popular light sources during the Renaissance years.

In terms of weaponry, Leonardo had the advantage of not starting from scratch. Military technology, even in ancient Rome, was years ahead of the general technology available to the rest of the population. Hand-powered weapons such as spears and arrows had been around for generations, and gunpowder was in use by the middle of the eleventh century, though it probably wasn’t used in Europe until the 1350s. This invention changed the course of warfare because it became nearly impossible to defend against guns with only hand-powered weapons. Leonardo’s designs for cannons, for example, were a response to the new way of waging war.

Eyeglasses were another significant medieval and Renaissance invention. By the 1300s, guilds in Venice were regulating eyeglass production, which, at the time, were probably considered a luxury item. When Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press (see number 61) made reading into more of a hobby than a luxury, though, eyeglasses came into much higher demand. Everyone wanted to read, and their eyes needed to keep up with them! Readily available books were a major factor for Leonardo because he was able to read the writings of ancient masters and, in the process, create his own interpretations and additions. Plus, if books could be published easily, he could also publish his own writings. In addition to all of these other inventions, Leonardo used the growing worldwide interest in mechanics to utilize and explore water. Naturally, his concepts relied on existing research with water pumps, which were developed in the Middle Ages.

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