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Da Vinci Bridge Built
cluening writes: "A bridge designed about 500 years ago by Leonardo Da Vinci has finally been built. It's mighty cool that something envisioned so long ago has actually been created with relatively little trouble." See also the project's home page.
Sorry, it isn't his 1500 footer, but merely a scaled down version. Does it anwser the question about whether or not his original could be built? No, not of stone at least. The stone one cannot be used for modern traffic.
Using todays technologies and materials we could easily do it, but the egos of states and engineers would get in the way.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
That being said, if there was another added benefit (strength, cost) would it be possible to create that bridge for automobiles? If anyone who knows more about architecture than I do has an answer, I'd like to know.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
"The laminated timber version, to be built by the firm best known for engineering the innovative "Viking Ship" skating arena for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway, Moelven Laminated Group, is estimated to cost a modest $466,000"
Leonardo envisioned the bridge in stone. When that proved too expensive, the Norwegians settled for a graceful wooden version for $1.36 million.
A 200% cost overrun. Still, it's cheaper than most dot-coms furniture bill.
IMHO, celebrating the ideas of a contender for "World's Smartest Human, Ever" is worth whatever this bridge cost. Besides, it looks like a really cool bridge.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Hats off to the norwegians for cool engineering and no fear of new (and old) designs.
Now, if someone could tell me please, when do they close the fjords at night?
The PBS show NOVA did a program about engineers trying to recreate the famous Rainbow Bridge shown in this this 900-year-old painting.
It is widely believed that the bridge actually existed in China centuries ago, but it's actual design was a bit of a mystery. Using the famous painting as a guide, they were able to come up with a feasable design using wood and ropes. They eventually built a full sized bridge in a Chinese village. The bridge was remarkably strong for a millenium-old design.
NOVA has to be one of the coolest shows around...
I even rode it to class a few times. Nothing attracts attention like riding your extremely loud wooden bicycle to class.
We ended up not having a place to store for the summer it so we simply locked it to a bike rack and left it as art. It lasted as art for several months before being removed.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I know it's a cliche, but it sure is nice to see it applied to something other than the return of bell-bottoms, hip-huggers or platform shoes.
Genius if forever.
Fashion can make a day seem forever.
Not quite. Remember that Leonardo was born in 1452, well before modern European naming conventions developed. His full name of 'Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci' means "Leonardo, sired by Piero, from Vinci".
So whilst "da Vinci" is the last chunk of his name, referring to this bridge as the work of "da Vinci" effectively means attributing it to "some bloke from Vinci". If he'd been born 400 years later, "da Vinci" would have been reasonably described as a surname, as it is, it stands as a reasonably useful way of referring to the man, but then so does 'Leonardo', which, as Kazzuya points out, has the benefit of being how the artist himself signed his work (let's not get into the 350 different ways Wm Sheakspeer spelled his name...)
TomV
This may not be the vindication everybody thinks it is.
/.'ed, so I cannot see if they factored these into the design, and I didn't see the Nova special. Does anybody know if they took these factors into account?
First, the actual bridge is much smaller than the bridge that DaVinci envisioned. When you scale things down, they get stronger due to the cube/square law (strength varies as the square of size, mass as the cube - halving the size of an object reduces strength to a quarter, but reduces mass (and thus needed strength) to an eighth).
Second, the actual bridge is using laminated lumber, rather than the stone DaVinci specified. Wood is a very strong substance, and will flex rather than crumble like stone.
The project page is
www.eFax.com are spammers
Google cache of project home page:
U :w ww.vebjorn-sand.com/thebridge.htm+&hl=en&lr=lang_e n
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:kyvmjWinIt
Yes, not only is it 1/3 the length and made out of a material unavailable to DaVinci, but it doesn't look to be supporting itself well.
:-)
Notice in the picture the four T shaped supports holding up the spans outside the bows. Even with these supports the near span is visibly sagging. In DaVinci's design that area was to be filled with masonry, I hope they do something other than leave those inappropriate supports in place.
And while I suppose the handrails are required by local building codes, they do spoil the entire effect. All those little vertical lines ruin the effect the clean span. Of course, a series of fatal accidents involving skateboarders and bicyclists falling onto the highway below would probably also spoil the bridge's reputation...
(And no, I have no idea how to make a visually appropriate hand rail. I'm not an architect, just a critic.
"I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you"
-- Da Vinci, 1502 AD
"No Thanks"
-- Sultan Bajazet II, 1502 AD
"Where do I sign?"
-- Norwegian Highway Department, 2001 AD
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
...of this really cool game where you build bridges. It's in full 3D with a complex physics engine. I had a lot of fun with this game yesterday :)
You are partially right, the ornithopter from the ice age on was free (eg 0 colorless mana)
THE most irritating creatures when used with giant groath or something
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
The arches are built in glued pine, a process used in many of the stunning venues at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. The railing is in stainless steel and teak.
What I want to know is did they use those hex keys to assemble it, and can I get one in Ikea?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
While his designs may not be right for the modern world, the way he dabbled in every form of science was amazing. If only more scientists could see beyond the tunnel-vision of their specialism to get a grasp of the 'big picture' the way Leonardo did.
Modern scientists such as Professor Stephen Hawking are truly geniusses, but they lack the all round scientific insight to be productive. How many bridges have been built by theoretical physicists ? ;-)
I think the problem is the education system which forces us by the 'major' system to specialise rather than follow our interests. This has to change as we move forward into the 21st century.
could somebody build a scaled down version of Archmedes mirror and mirror this Leonardo bridge site so I can see the pictures? Use wood if you need to.
There is no truth to the rumor that Slashdot is the modern equivalent of the hemlock that Socrates drank.
I was able to get the pictures off the website and I have put them in a .zip file and I am sharing them on WinMX. I also included this note along with the pictures.
Original story: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/01/135215
Pictures obtained from: http://www.vebjorn-sand.com/thebridge.htm
From: AnotherBrian
These files are probably copyrighted, I have made them avaible through other means in order to allow people who can not access the above web site due to the 'Slashdot Effect'. The files will be removed from my server 48 houres after the posting date of the artical above. Please do the same.
Find it by searching for: [SLASHDOT When I'm at my computer I will try to give this file 1st priority. It's hard (for me) to tell if a site will be /.'ed and if the pictures won't be avaible to others. I'm wondering what the rest of you think. It would be nice for the first posters to follow my example for sites that could go down quickly. How many of you would be willing to take some time to do the same? I think I have a nice template for setting up mirrors, (suggestions welcome).
Actually he has a point, the naming convention does not translate into English properly.
Not quite it will translate perfectly, though convention is that the only translation applicable to proper nouns is where there are incompatable alphabets involved.
Where problems arise is officialdom assuming that all names conform to a personal name/family name format (with an optional "auxillary" name.) When there are plenty of people who's names simply do not follow this format.
this was told to me on a punt (a boat) by a Cambridge student and they lie with the best of them(most spies came out of Cambridge) anyway the story goes
Newton designed/built a bridge over the river cam in Cambridge
It had no bolts and held together with gravity
Students could not work out how it worked
One night pissed they took it apart to find out
And they could not put it back now its held with bolts !
bridges are fun no matter how much tech people get them wrong witness the London millennium bridge
(it swayed so much you could not walk over it !)
regards
john jones
The New York Times had this article A Crystal Beacon Atop a 20's Curiosity about a 42-story glass and steel structure -- inspired by the Crystal Palace built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London - that is going to be built atop Hearst Corporation's headquarters at 959 Eighth Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets in New York. The existing building, completed in 1928, was originally designed as the base of a taller structure.
Architectural critic Herbert Muschamp thinks it's a great project, something the New York skyline has been waiting for. "The possibilities for integrity are limited only by the mind's capacity to hold unity and complexity together. That is the capacity that distinguishes architecture from real estate," he says.
(Yes, I know that reading this entire article requires a dollar for a print copy or a free registration, but in my opinion it was well worth it.)
...except for being seven times smaller and made out of different materials.
And the Boeing 777 is just like his airplane design too, except for being bigger and a different shape and made out of different materials.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
A year ago to the day I was in Istanbul, on my way to Italy. In Italy (Florence, to be exact) I had the luck to visit an exhibition of Da Vinci, complete with models. This bridge was the most impressive, both mechanically and historically, due to the fact that I crossed the Bosporus bridge over the Golden Horn just a few days back. The design was so far ahead of it's time (although at the time I thought it was just about ready for today for construction in ALUMINUM) I had wondered how many other Da Vinci projects would yet see the light of modern technology, far after Da Vinci had passed.
His ideas are bizarre at best. Yet we already have the Helicopter. We now also have his Bridge. And some people think he was the father of photography. I have seen his paintings, his sketches, and models of his projects. They never cease to amaze me.
Perhaps he was a genius. Perhaps he was a lunatic. Either way, I wish someday I could have the insight that he had, and be as absolutely "crazy" as he was.
Leonardo actually signed most of his stuff as Io, Leonardo ("I, Leonardo").
Until relatively recently, most people were known as So-and-So from Some-Place, possibly with the addition of Son or Daughter of Somebody. There just wasn't enough travel or communication to make any finer-granularity naming scheme necessary.
To this day Russians use the So-and-so, Son/Daughter of Somebody form, which is the usual adult form of address. Icelanders form names like this too. The Celtic patronymics Mc/Mac are well known.
Examples: Mikhail Sergeyevich ("son of Sergei") Gorbachev, Bjork Gudmundsdottir.
In France having la particule "de" in one's name is positively fashionable. People search family trees to find any justification for using it. They may even invent justification: one of Napoleon's colleagues changed his name from Demorny to de Morny.
All we have in Canada is a popular TV show called Da Vinci's Inquest.
...laura of Vancouver, daughter of Dennis
Dagbladet 1
Dagbladet 2
Aftenposten 1 - english text with a nice pic.
Aftenposten 2 picture special.
Pages also include some text for those of us who can read Nowegian.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I see a few nay-sayers here, regarding the size and the materials used for this construction of da Vinci's bridge. It was originally meant to be of stone, and much bigger. Naysayers discuss that it is made of wood, and the inverse square law of size vs strength.
Now, I am not an engineer - and the arguments made are valid. But I do know a bit about Da Vinci - and the one thing he wasn't is incompetent.
If it was to be made of wood - he would have designed it that way - he knew about composite construction, from designing and building large (and not so large) torsion and bow-based siege engines for various sponsors. Many of his designs were meant to be done in wood, actually - others in stone, and still other in a combinations, which included metals and glass (optics, in that case).
He not only designed, but built large scale machines for boring long lengths of both wood and metal (for water pipes and cannons, respectively). These are large scale constructions and projects - I have no doubt that his full scale construction, as intended in stone, could be realized as he planned.
It is true that he saw farther than most men, and did lapse in areas that were more conjecture than real things that could work (his helicopter and ornithopter designs would likely not work - but they saw far, at the least - his parachute would have been fragile, and wouldn't have worked too well - but it has been built and tested - and it did work better than thought). But most of works are truely the "stuff of legends".
Here we are - 500 years after this man's death - still discussing, still trying out his ideas, ideals, and plans. I think of the sketched self-portrait of his as an old-man - as well as various other images I have seen of him. A powerful, muscular individual. This was a man intent on improving his mind, his body, and the world around him. It has been said that he was strong enough to bend an iron horseshoe with his bare hands - yet gentle enough to not harm an insect. He was supposedly a vegetarian. I have also heard he may have been homosexual.
None of this changes my image of the man - this man is a man to aspire to be like. A true individual who walked on the earth - and made it a better place through art, science, compassion, and dignity.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
A year ago Adrian Nicholas followed the 500 year old Vinci design for a pyramid shaped parachute - built the thing, and used it. See the cool picture here
-Kraft
Live and let live
It's probably possible to build such a monster, but the falsework needed to hold up all that granite during construction would in itself be a huge bridge. Steel bridges are usually self-supporting while under construction, but that doesn't work for stone, which has zilch tensile strength. It would probably take more work building the temporary structures to hold up all that stone than to build a bridge som other way.
If you look at the model, you can see that the sag is part of the design. I'd be interested to know how this would have been done with stone, and without rebar :).
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
But a differential is just a mechanical router and he designed that.
IBM built some very cool models of his other works but they are now here (in English)
He also designed a non-working device that looks like a parachute...
...but would kill the user.
Actually, according to another post in this discussion, his parachute actually worked quite well, even being made of materials and with tools of the time.
Ahh, now that might be possible. According to the article, the person who tried it cut himself free 2000 feet above the ground and switched to a modern parachute to avoid injury.
Cheers......