Slashdot Mirror
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)."
hackers many time release slightly broken code when it comes to exploits so that if someone wants to actually compile the code they will have to have some knowledge of programming.
IIRC, he also wrote in boustrophedon, and in italian, which is just crazy paranoid.
It'd be like double encrypting your entire HDD because you're the world's finest pornographer.
I should know, I'm a medical doctor.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Actually it does. Remember the military does not tolerate gays. He is the poster child for right wing hate. He is what modern right wingers would call 'a damn tree-hugging hippie!'
Who had the last laugh?
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Babbage supposedly did the same thing in case spies got ahold of his work.
Babbage printer
They do this on printed maps sometimes. Rand McNally, or whoever, will purposely misspell the name of a river or something mundane so that if anyone ever just reuses their material, it will be patently obvious, if their lawyers decide to check it out.
Actually artists of the time who were of "respectable" status did not take in young ladies and ask them nicely to take off thier clothes if they ever wanted to get another commision from the church. The artistic schools of the age would often perform the indicated anatomical substitutions once the carefully chaperoned sittings were complete.
Artists who broke this rule were isolated by the church. There were some exceptions, but as a rule, models were as male as the actors of the day.
If he had been a little less inquisitive and a little more compliant he might have ended up as a Jesuit monk, but was considered unsuitable for the holy vocation, somthing which colored his attitude for the rest of his life.
His disdain for sex is more likely due to his devotion to his own mother who was a simple barmaid who could neither read nor write. Her simplicity, yet country horse sense, educated him in compliment to the formal education he recieved from his father's family.
Da Vinci had two qualities which when coupled with his lack of want, produced a great man. Curiosity, and ingenuity.
Fast machines, powerfull AI, impulsive invention,... All I lack is a good espresso machine!
Actually, judging from the amount of wood and leather needed for some of his inventions, I doubt that he cared more about a rabbit than his fellow man. So I can't call him a treehugger.
And, as noted in posts by others, he volunteered his work for military application, so I believe he supported soldiers fighting for him. As such, he is clearly not a hippie.
However, while I can find plenty of refrences to Da Vinci painting female nudes, a quick search on google for "Da Vinci sex exploits" is quite dissapointing. So obviously he is gay:-)
--Cam
Onna those modern Right-wing, gun-toting, baby-killing Army types.
All jocks think about is sports. All nerds think about is sex.
Da Vinci, like not a few Florintines, was also what was what we now call (loaded term) a paedophile. He began living with Gaicomo Caprotti (Salai) - to whom he left half his vineyard, when the boy was ten. Da Vinci's final companion, Francesco Melzi, was bequeathed his drawings and papers.
The denial of homosexuality by many historians is worthy of a study in itself. For for instance, Rictor Norton's excellent site:
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/
That Da Vinci was a pacificist..and yet was also the first sniper. Using a rifle of his own design, he shot and killed a french commander at over 300 yards. At the time, this was considered an impossible task.
Don't know if this is relevant, but to make his notes harder for others to read DaVinci often wrote backwards. Is is possible that some gearing and other things are reversed because he was also drawing backward and just made a few mistakes?