Design by Leonardo da Vinci for a flying machine, c 1490.

Diagrams and notes from one of Leonardo's notebooks. Da Vinci (1452-1519) was the most outstanding Italian painter, sculptor, architect and engineer of the Renaisance period. He had a wide knowledge and understanding far beyond his times of most of the sciences, including biology, anatomy, physiology, hydrodynamics, mechanics and aeronautics. His notebooks, written in mirror writing, contain original remarks on all of these.