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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.""
It's taken them long enough to figure it out.
I guess that 2 things can be learned from this
1) Da Vinci was a genius ahead of his own time
2) Document your frigging drawings! were not all mind readers ya know!
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
A programmable steering mechanism allows it go straight, or turn at pre-set angles. But only to the right.
To the right? That's of no use! Reprogram that sucker to turn left and send it to NASCAR.
I wonder if it'll get you to work on time?
...but the real headline will be when someone successfully pilots one of his flying machines!
They should create a replica of the turtle van used in the old cartoon, now that would be worthwhile science!
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I guess DaVinci agrees that we should be Left Hand Drive...
And the SUV that nearly killed me this morning isn't?
The real reason it isn't on the road is government regulation. There needs to be a 10-year rigorous testing project to make sure it meets federal emmission standards.
Until homeless bums jump in front of your clockwork car at traffic lights, start cranking and then demand five bucks...
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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.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Ok, that's pretty good now how about someone go and try to build one of these?
Helicopter
I was going to say a witty pun related to "A Clockwork Orange," but I couldn't think of anything that rhymes with it...
1) Make obscure drawings the kind of look like what you are thinkging of
2) Don't document, allow other to figure it out
3)Profit!
wait, that would be management.
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(Emphasis mine)
Not to pick nits, but shouldn't it have infinite miles per gallon? Zero miles per gallon implies that, no matter how much gas you put in it, it'll never go anywhere.
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.
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Imagine if Da Vinci's genius would have been amplified by the use of computers--CAD simulations; and computation. He could have accomplished even more than his prodigious list of both scientific and artistic accomplishments.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
"It is a very powerful machine. It could run into something and do serious damage." ...and to make things worse, they also successfully reconstructed Da Vinci's design for a clockwork cell phone.
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I made a Da Vinci bicycle my freshman year out of wood. Got a lot of odd looks riding it around campus. It was also quite loud. When I left at the year of the year I locked it to a bike rack and it wasn't there when I got back. If you ever see someone riding around Palo Alto on a primitive wooden bicycle knock them off it for me!
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Was curious about the drawing and found a copy here (Google cache)
I thought it was a good idea
of that guys post here
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oranges poranges, who cares!
Unless you are a rap star. In that case the proper rhyme for 'Oranges' is 'booty'.
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"It is a very powerful machine," Professor Galluzzi said. So powerful that although they have made a full-scale "production model", they have not dared test it. "It could run into something and do serious damage," he said.
Did they consider testing it outside perhaps?
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Is he talking about a hummer?
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.
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/automobile/
"The wooden models spring forward several meters (yards) after a pair of back wheels are wound up, much like a kid's car zooms forward after the wheels are revved up against a surface."
Only several meters? Not a very quick machine, I imagine. A Supra rear wing and a dozen Type-R stickers would surely help.
So we assume that because DaVinci was such a genius, this failure must be due to people failing to understand his design. Bright people then try to figure out what he could have meant.
It seems to me there is a very real possibility that what we actually have is a new design by those bright people, somewhat inspired by DaVinci's ideas.
"HELP!,HELP!, I'm trapped in some sort of box!"
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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 . . .
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Wooden work.
"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.
Where the hell are you going to sit on this thing? I can just imagine a bunch of people in Victorian clothing pushing it backwards and getting on their skateboards while still holding on for a ride down the cobbled streets.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
... must be worried.
The Erogenous Zone
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?
This site contains a lot of the original da vinci models and drawings
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
I always just changed my scantron form to make it indicate it was the new 'master' scantron machines (the ones my school had) scored cards marked as masters as a perfect score (0 missed) and to the hell with the forms folliwng mine.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
... I've always wanted to know what makes these things tick.