Technikatörténeti szemle 13. (1982)

TANULMÁNYOK - Szabadváry Ferenc: Leonardo da Vinci: Efficiency Problems of Technological Inventions

Picture 4. Sketch of a war chariot by Taccola (1381—1453) (from Gille) Agricola nor Biringuccio were inventors: they weren't concerned with construction, didn't design machines, they just described the technology of their age, the machines they had seen operating in mines and plants, machines that had been invented and constructed at some earlier time by truly inventive engineers. These engineers — who had produced so much value for humanity — remained, however, anonymous. There were also some reknown engineers who — in many features — were similar to Leonardo. Let us mention, for example, Leone Battista Alberti (1402— 1472), Filarete (1416—1470), Francisco Martini di Giorgio (1439—1501), the Fioravantes, father and son. The father was the inventor of sluices provided with gates, while the son, as early as 1455, shifted the campanile of the Santa Maria del Tempio church in Bologna, weighing 407 tons, to a distance of 13 meters, on rollers. These engineers were all Italians, somewhat older than Leonardo, and all were — to a larger or lesser extent — artists, though not geniuses like the Tuscan. All of them wrote books on engineering and made drawings of novel constructions, many of which remained unrealized designs. They were active in princely courts. The significant difference — in contrast to Leonardo — was that they published their concepts in books open to everybody. They were well-known persons, Leonardo knew most of them and they certainly must have influenced him: similarities can easily be observed. All this shows that Leonardo's technological conceptions didn't arise abruptly from nihility. They reflected the influence of other, earlier engineers, like always in science and technology, where no results ever emerge from absolute nonexistence, but everyone continues where his predecessors had stopped: development takes place steadily, in small steps of individuals. Leonardo's technological drawings are doubtlessly outstanding as to perspective, to from and graphical art. May be this was the reason why they made such an amazing impression when they found and why they were so much overestimated. Leonardo's manuscripts seemed to arise all of a sudden from nothingness and gave ample cause for admiration. They existed in one single copy only, and were first published in the 19th century at a time when the books of the above-cited engineers, published in the 15th century, some of them already in print, were locked up in libraries and had long been forgotten.