Slashdot Mirror
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.""
Ok, that's pretty good now how about someone go and try to build one of these?
Helicopter
This has been done - There was a programme on Channel 4 (UK) about three weeks ago in which they successfully built his glider and flew it. It flew very well, although it was apparently like nothing that currently exists with regards to handling, and it had no yaw (I think thats the word) at all.
...no matter how much gas you put in it, it'll never go anywhere...
Well, seeing as it doesn't run on gas, this would be correct. When it's wound down, I can pour gas on and into it all day, and it won't go any farther than the burning embers can fly.
-twb
Enjoy.
If anybody happens to have a link to a picture of the actual plans, I would be QUITE interested in getting a look at those.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Door hinge
DaVinci was a genius, yes. However, I am no longer so inclined to say that he was ahead of his time. Quite a bit of our current view of the "backward-thinking" dark/middle ages comes about from (can't remember his name now - he wrote "Sleepy Hollow"). Also, they apparently KNEW the world was round - Columbus did NOT make that discovery, and it was NOT against Church doctrine. I caught a program by Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) [I believe] and he was going through and outlining this. It was really an amazing insight into the time. So ... they were actually NOT the "backward savages" that we're inclined to believe, nor was the Church such a crushingly obtuse entity with respect to science - seems it was in its best interest to encourage people to check out and unravel God's workings - to get to better know the mind of God. Sooooo ... it was a great program, anyway.
Like this one - or is that the one?m _ Vinci. html
http://www.petrelli.fsnet.co.uk/leonardo.ht
I can't tell from the picture how the steering works. It looks like the handle bars are adjustable - can be pulled towards the rider.
This claims it is a hoax
http://users.aol.com/PryorDodge/Leonardo_da
If they think it worth the journey, the Utah Salt Flats would be an ideal location to test the full-size car. 30,000 acres of perfectly flat earth ought to be enough to elminate any chance of damaging anything larger than a dirt clod. The location is often used for drag racing and testing experimental vehicles.
I will soon complete a modern version of Da Vinci's nuclear breeder reactor as soon as I can find a wood cog that decelerates neutron emissions.
No, to slow down neutrons you need glow-in-the-dark gun and bow sights. Any boy scout knows that!
Particularly smart people before the advent of a patent system.
Once upon a time, in a New World far, far away from it's cultural origins, there arose a new nation, founded by men who thought very hard about what they were doing and, for the most part, got things pretty right (there are always men who think only of their own benefit who muck up the system).
Thomas Jefferson got the patent system pretty right, and while things were under his direct control the system worked very well and Leonardo (had he come to America) would have felt free to publish and comment without fear, and the public would not have had to wait hundreds of years for his ideas to become freely available to them. This system actually stood as a model for the world for 100 years.
But extraordinary men are always replaced by lesser men.
Patents are not the problem. Patents are the solution to a problem that most people have forgotten existed. Except, perhaps, those trying to create corporeal versions of Leonardo's drawings.
The problem is protectionism bolstered by greed. Congress, of course, is supposed to represent the people in creating systems that allow the people to engage in profit making enterprises without abrogating the rights of the people.
But congress, for the most part, is made up of these lesser men, driven by protectionism and greed.
"What if you were an idiot? And what if you were a member of congress? But I repeat myself." --Mark Twain.
KFG
I saw somewhere that DaVinci purposely put flaws into his drawings as a type of copy protection. Only another genius would be able to see the flaw and build the device correctly. This would come in handy if his plans were stolen or captured since many of his designs were commissioned for siege craft.
Columbus' success was based on two things: 1) He vastly underestimated the size of the Earth (even compared to other estimates of the time) and 2) got really lucky that the Americas were in the way.
It's well-known that he built subtle flaws into many of his designs. It was a common practice of inventors before patents were created: he alone knew the "mistakes" he had introduced, and could easily fix them, but anyone else who stole his notes would spend a long time making something that would never run.
(One example is the mechanical lion he built for the king of Spain. If you build it exactly as described in his design, it is impossible for it to move: its gears turn against each other. Yet DaVinci did build it, and it worked.)
by having to compete with omnipotent corporations with armies of lawyers and patent specialists.
I mean, if genius is innate, should we not have like 10 Da Vincis just due to probability and the increase in population?
Maybe an environment that recognizes and protects novel ideas is also required besides just having access to the technology. Unfortunately, it is harder these days to protect one's own ideas and the environments that have the resources to protect ideas (corporations) usually cultivate environments that fear change (the status quo is what made them big in the first place).
I don't know about you, but I believe that today's Da Vincis are hacking away on some Open Source project somewhere, since that appears to be the last free haven of free thinking . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
"The government often employs its own patent systems to protect the ideas embodied in its war machines, since those 'secrets' never remain secret very long after a device is actually produced.
Perhaps that's an underlying reason why governments have been so willing to extend the protections of patents beyond all normal reason."
Not quite. Most patent systems in place have a provision were your patent can be seized for govermental purposes. e.g. A new means to kill everyone on the planet, A super decrypter that breaks everyone's code. Try reading "The Puzzle Palace".
I don't think the two are related. Remember military secrets. Once in the wild, no patent on earth is going to protect that, from an enemy using against us.
How can you tell this car was built by academics? They spend god knows how many hours building a car out of wood, from purposely obfuscated plans that are half a thousand years old, and have never heard of the Utah salt flats. I mean come on, they test rocket cars there! Do they really think a giant wind-up toy is going to do better than that?
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Reminds me of grade school. No matter which class, there would always be some kid sitting next to me, peeking over at my paper. I'd act like I didn't notice/care, but secretly mark wrong answers. As soon as they finished their test, I'd go back and change them to the right answers.
I fooled kids for many years that way. No one ever confronted me as to why I always had a higher grade than they did.
Served them right.
You're nothing; like me.
It really makes me think about the human "meme cloud"..
I mean, its not the leonardo necessarily was the first person to think about these sorts of things, but its more like it takes a genius to synthesize all the little meme's floating out there. The steam engine was employed by the greeks to open temple doors in Socrate's time... How long did it take for someone to combine the idea with the cart meme?
Seems that if you have a genius on hand, they can have a flash of insight and put this sort of stuff together.
Which is probably why science fiction has lead to so many inventions.. it sort of gives you a "pre-patent" description... I have this idea, and here's a plausable description of its operation. Given enough time, some genius will connect it with all the ideas that currently DO exist, and will create the ide ain question. So these geniuses (like Leonardo) might not be creating much of anything, just incredible synthesists. Or, given that many of them were also very talented artists, they are able to create *just* enough themselves to fill in all the "*poof* a miracle occurs" spots in the plan.
meh
Doesn't "flange" technically rhyme with orange? It's not a very good rhyme...but it's better than nothing, right?
Australian and British WCs are mostly of the "washdown" design. The entire basin is really just the belled-out mouth of a U-bend. The waste pipe (110mm is standard in the UK) goes over a weir of about 10cm., then usually exits backwards through an outside wall. As a result there is not much water in the bottom of the basin, just enough to seal the trap; this acts like a brewer's airlock to prevent sewer gases from entering the house. The flushwater pushes the contents of the basin backwards, up and over the trap. Usage and flushing are noisy, but the full-bore outlet is almost immune to blockage.
The syphonic closet is more popular in the USA. This has a specially-constructed trap within the pedestal which slows the egress of water. The waste pipe goes from the bottom of the basin, up and over and down within the pedestal - and suddenly widens out to full bore just below the level of the bottom of the basin. When flushed, the water level in the basin rises at first; then, as soon as the first drop begins to descend into the wider section, a syphonic action is set up which draws out the basin contents. The action is quieter, since the waste and the flushwater have less height to fall, but the more complex trap design -- particularly the necessity for a constriction in order to start the syphonic action -- make this design more prone to blockage.
There is also a twin-trap WC, which also uses a syphonic action in flushing. In the twin-trap closet, the flushwater passes over a venturi device into a plenum chamber which slows its progress towards the flushing rim. The venturi draught draws out the air from the space between the upper and lower traps. The lower trap has the deeper seal, so water is drawn over the weir of the upper trap. This starts a syphonic action, which continues until the basin is empty (the lower trap behaves like a traditional washdown WC trap). The plenum chamber holds enough water to recharge the basin and upper trap.
Despite their almost silent action, twin-trap WCs are not all that common, as they are expensive {due to all that complexity} and still somewhat susceptible to blockage.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
>> When handled properly, patents are in the
...he says, typing on a machine, and about concepts, that only exist because of patents.
>> best interest of everyone.
>
> Not me. I don't like patents. At all.
If you think the Chromatic Dragon of Ignorance should be slain with the vicious sword of flame, turn to Retort #1. If you think the Dragon should be slain with the psionic power of Mind Encynicization, turn to Retort #2:
|1|
|2| Yes, I prefer living in a world where thousands of years go by with little technological development, too. Let's get rid of copyrights, too, so we can listen to the same music and read the same stories over and over again for centuries.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.