Leonardo’s Lost Robots

✍ Scribed by Mark Elling Rosheim (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 199
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Leonardo's Lost Robots reinterprets Leonardo da Vinci's mechanical design work, revealing a new level of sophistication not recognized by art historians or engineers. By identifying his major technological projects, the book reinterprets Leonardo's legacy of notes, showing that apparently unconnected fragments from dispersed manuscripts actually comprise cohesive designs for functioning automata. Using the rough sketches scattered throughout almost all of Leonardo's notebooks, the author has reconstructed Leonardo's programmable cart, which was the platform for other automata: a Robot Lion, a Robot Knight, and a hydraulically powered automaton for striking a bell. Through a readable, lively narrative, Mark Rosheim explains how he reconstructed da Vinci's designs. In a foreword the world-renowned Leonardo scholar Carlo Pedretti interprets the significance of these reconstructions for our understanding of Leonardo's oeuvre.

✦ Table of Contents

Beginnings....Pages 1-20
Leonardo’s Programmable Automaton and Lion....Pages 21-68
Leonardo’s Knight....Pages 69-113
Leonardo’s Bell Ringer....Pages 115-160
Epilogue Leonardo’s Legacy and Impact on Modern Technology....Pages 161-165

✦ Subjects

Automation and Robotics;History of Science;Popular Science in Mathematics/Computer Science/Natural Science/Technology;Engineering Design;Arts;History of Physics