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.

Comments

Overbudget

[Ratbert42]

"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.

Another cool old bridge

[e4]

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...

Da Vinci bicycle

[John Harrison]

For the final project of my freshman year Civ class we built a da Vinci bicycle out of wood. Acutally we built it twice since the janitors from the dorm thought the first one which had only to be assembled to be complete was junk so they threw it out. The second one was ridable and could be pedaled but was hard to turn.

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.

Re:It's not "da Vinci"; it's "Leonardo".

[TomV]

"da Vinci" is the last name. He's known as Leonardo because he signed as Leonardo

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

Maybe not the vidication everybody thinks it is

[wowbagger]

This may not be the vindication everybody thinks it is.

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 /.'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?

there's a sucker born every few centuries

[abde]

"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

Archimedes mirror

[G Neric]

the ancients built many marvelous things. Archimedes once built a giant mirror that would focus the sun on enemy ships and catch them afire.

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.

Re:Leonardo's methods are the way forward

[Tenebrious1]

...see beyond the tunnel-vision of their specialism to get a grasp of the 'big picture'

The problem is, the "big picture" doesn't pay. That type of science is called "blue-sky" research, and there aren't that many companies (besides the US Gov, IBM, GE) that are willing or can afford to maintain such research groups. Unless you specialize, you don't get funding. A lot of researchers would love to be generalists, dabbling in everything and trying to come up with something new. However, unless you pick a specialty, you don't get funding from the school. You don't get research grants. You can't pay off your student loans. So you specialize.

...He invented the helicopter.

No, he designed a non-working machine that sorta looks like a helicopter. He also designed a non-working device that looks like a parachute but would kill the user. I think one of the criteria for an "invention" is that it works. I don't think you can get a US Patent on a non-working device.

...How many bridges have been built by theoretical physicists ?

Every Single One. The designers might not have had a nice shiny plaque on the door that said "theoretical physicist", but the Roman Aquaducts weren't designed by peasants throwing rocks around hoping they would stay together. Even the fallen tree over the stream. Some bright individual had been using deadfalls to cross streams, and thought to himself - "hey, I could cut down a tree and lay it across *myself* instead of having to hike all the way up here". He was a theoretical physicists. So was DaVinci for that matter, although he rarely put theory into practice. Theoretical and physicist are relative terms remember depending on what the general pool of knowledge was in that time period.

...forces us... to specialise rather than follow our interests

Nothing forces you to specialize into something you don't like. You choose your major. You choose the topic for your thesis. You choose which research grants to apply for. You choose which to accept.

I chose not to pursue a degree in theoretical mathematics. I choose to instead be a dirt poor novelist struggling to pay my massive school loans working as a helpdesk tech. It was my choice to leave the system. Everyone has that choice.

Not to say the school system doesn't have problems and couldn't use a LOT of reform at the primary and secondary levels. That I don't have an answer for.

Re:It's not "da Vinci"; it's "Leonardo".

[spaceyhackerlady]

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

Leonardo...

[cr0sh]

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.