Da Vinci's Purposeful Mistakes

puppetman writes "According to a story out today, Leonardo Da Vinci deliberately introduced mistakes in his inventions. The series, Leonardo, produced by the BBC, claims that simple mistakes were introduced; mistakes that would not become apparent until after the contraption was built. The series hypothesizes that this was either a form of patent protection, or a way of ensuring his work did not end up being used for military purposes (Da Vinci was a gay, vegetarian pacifist)."

Comments

Vegetarians vs pacifists

[stefanlasiewski]

And not all pacificts are vegetarian, and being vegetarian (or gay) doesn't make you more of a pacifist.

Da Vinci designed a tank, an assault chariot armed with whirling scythes, and numerous pieces of Artillery. Not very pacifist.

Adolph Hitler sometimes considered himself to be a vegetarian, (A loose definition by today's standards: He ate some pork and fowl, but also ate alot of vegetables, spoke of the benefits of vegetarianism. Pretty radical in those days in Germany, the Pork Capital), and did not consider himself a pacifist.

This certainly supports the point that not all pacifists are vegetarian.

Re:Thanks for the insight.

[aminorex]

It is highly doubtful that he was a homosexual. What is known is that he was anonymously charged with being a homosexual once, and acquitted of the charge. See this link.

The degree of his pacifism is also quite suspect:

1482 saw him writing to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza listing his capabilities as a designer of both civil and military machines. Italy was being afflicted by wars between the various city-states; this was followed by a French invasion. This was a time of rapid development of firearms and explosives and military engineers were important figures. Leonardo's had many ideas for fortifications, bridges, weapons, and river diversions to flood the enemy.

The article's author is certaintly quite correct, however, that he was a vegetarian.