The Real da Vinci Code

r.jimenezz writes "This month's Wired magazine has a fascinating article about an American roboticist and an Italian scholar who apparently have demonstrated that one of Leonardo's creations, a three-wheeled cart, is actually a 'physically programmable robot'. Very interesting reading."

Comments

Everything but the internet

[Big Nothing]

"Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history," says art historian Kenneth Clark, "whom each of us must re-create for ourself." Da Vinci has been credited with inventing just about everything but the Internet."

It's a shame that we had to wait until Al Gore came along for that one.

they also found out that robot name was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bender!!

Re:they also found out that robot name was...

[mog007]

I don't think "Bite my shiny metal ass" would roll off the tounge so easily in Italian.

Patent!!

[slarshdot]

All your technology are belong to Leo.

Re:Slashdotted already

[MavEtJu]

Here's the text, I can't see this site holding up much longer.

Yeah right. Wired is better at this than the average cable modem ISP.

Re:da Vinci's flawed invention

[OverflowingBitBucket]

AFAIK, da Vinci (and other inventors of the time) placed errors and flaws in the schematics of their inventions on purpose.

I'm a software engineer, and I've been doing this for years. I didn't realise da Vinci also had job security issues.

Babelfish

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bite my shiny metal ass"

Translates to:

"Morda il mio asino lucido del metallo"

Its even funnier when I translate it back to the Queen's English:

"It bites my ass I polish of the metal"

This should be a game... me thinks!

Re:Babelfish

[saforrest]

Beißen Sie meinen glänzenden Metallesel.

The funny thing about this is that it uses the polite form of the second-person, Sie. So it's as though you said, "Please, sir, bite my shiny metal donkey".

A better equivalent would be:

Beiß meinen glänzenden Metallarsch!

which Babelfish translates to

Bite my shining metal ass!

(Pretty good, really.)

DaVinci invents BSOD

[Linker3000]

In other news, apparently every time the invention didn't work as intended, DaVinci would hide it behind a blue canvas screen so that onlookers couldn't see him working on the mechanics - hence the term "Blue Screen of DaVinci" (BSoD) came in to common use during that era for any mechanical device failure.

In later years, a manufacturer of popular computer operating systems adapted this 'blue screen' imagery for their own use and programmed their applications to displaye a blue screen on a regular basis in honour of the famous inventor and his work on early 'computing' devices.

Come on people!!!

[JamesP]

Someone forgot the question: But does it run Linux???

Stupid Wired

[Dun Malg]

Know one of the things that bugs me about the typical Wired writer? Lame attempts to inject dramatic tension in what is, really, just an informational article. Things like this:

We sit in his office and pore over sketches of the cart on folio 812 recto of the Codex Atlanticus. I reach carefully for the espresso his wife has placed on the table, trying not to spill any on a nearby copy of the Italian mathematician Bernadino Baldi's 1589 translation of Heron of Alexandria's Automata. It is a first edition.

Wow! I'm on the edge of my seat! Will he spill his coffee on the 400 year old book? Quick! Click the "next page" link and find out!