526 Years On, Da Vinci's Clockwork Car Constructed

SimianOverlord writes "The Guardian (and several other news outlets) report on the attempt by Professor Paulo Galluci and his team to build a working model of Leonard Da Vinci's clockwork powered car, designed in 1478. Previous attempts have been made to create the vehicle, but they failed to work properly. This is thought to be due to a misunderstanding of the original design, which is corrected in the new model. Apart from the 1/3 scale replica, the team have also made a full size model but have not dared to test it. Professor Galluzzi explained "It is a very powerful machine. It could run into something and do serious damage.""

Comments

Found a picture

[insanechemist]

Was curious about the drawing and found a copy here (Google cache)

Re:fascinating

[Seekerofknowledge]

// |/| 4 1 (| |/| 3-3 _| + + 1 _| 0 + '| 3 =| =| |_| 8 3 |-| +
// 2 |V| '| 0 =| 2 |/| 4 '| + |/| 0 1 + ) |/| |_| =| 2 1 |-| +
void to_little_endian(void * buffer) {

Whew, I finally figured out what that said. It only took about 5 mins, a mirror, and some head-scratching.

For all of those who don't have a mirror handy, or are too lazy (who are we kidding :), it says:

the buffer to little-endian
this function transforms

One more thing:
I guess this function knows how big a buffer to convert? I mean, is it converting some words to little-endian or dwords? hmm, what about 64-bit ints? Doesn't seem very clear. I hope this didn't come out of the Linux kernel :P

Here is a pic of the machine....

[cowmix]

http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/automobile/

Re:Picture of car

[chevybowtie]

For a hires version, try here