Inventor: Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15th, 1452 in Tuscany, Italy. His other and father were not married and he spent the first years of his life with his peasant mother in the countryside where he learned to observe and love nature. Leonardo then went to live with his father’s wealthy family in Florence where he was given a good education and he started drawing. At the age of fourteen he joined Verocchio’s painting studio as an apprentice. Leonardo is most famous for his paintings. He developed new techniques to paint with perspective and shadings. His most famous paintings include ‘The Last Supper’ and the ‘Mona Lisa’. However, Leonardo also kept notebooks (often in mirror writing) and drawings on architecture, elements of mechanics and human anatomy. Leonardo liked to observe everything around him and describe and depict it in great detail. He observed flight and designed a helicopter and a hang glider. For wealthy leaders he designed bridges and military tanks, guns and bombs. Other designs included a submarine, a car, a bicycle, a calculator and solar heating. However, the technology did not exist in Leonardo’s day to actually construct his ideas and very few of the designs were actually made at the time. Some have been constructed nowadays using the original designs and many of them work! Leonardo spent the last year of his life in France, a guest of the French king at the court in Amboise. Leonardo died at the age of sixty seven in 1519. It is clear that as Sigmund Freud said: “Leonardo da Vinci was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep”