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

Da Vinci the programmer

[thinkliberty]

Da Vinci would have made a great programmer. Just look at his beard!

this is still done...

[kasper37]

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.

Ah! I get it now!

[Alethes]

That explains why Microsoft puts all those bugs in their software. To protect their intellectual property and prevent their software from being used for military implementations.

Oh wait... it didn't work.

A lot to learn from Leonardo

[Henry V .009]

I think many programmers have a lot to learn from this tale. We now have two useful phrases:

"It's not a bug, it's a feature."
"It's there to protect my intellectual property and keep my program from being exploited by the military."

Thanks for the insight.

[moonboy]

The fact that Da Vinci was a "...gay, vegetarian..." really helps drive home the point that he was a pacifist. Thanks for the wonderful insight.

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.

Re:Thanks for the insight.

[McCarrum]

Thank you ... I was going to write this up, but you beat me to it :) Leonardo was accused to being gay very early in his life, as it was one of the most effective (and highly used) political tools of the time. Bloody Inquisition!

Oh, and stop the three thousand replies due to occur ... Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Re:Thanks for the insight.

[deepvoid]

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.

Da Vinci was paranoid

[Hubert_Shrump]

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.

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.

Babbage did the same thing

[Caractacus Potts]

Babbage supposedly did the same thing in case spies got ahold of his work.

Babbage printer

... was one of the most effective political tools

[jolshefsky]

Leonardo was accused to being gay very early in his life, as it was one of the most effective (and highly used) political tools of the time.

Heh heh. "Was."

Kinda funny...

[craenor]

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.

Well He Did Write in a Mirror

[serutan]

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?