The Aerial Screw
The aerial screw is Da Vinci's "helicopter". When people talk about Da Vinci inventing the helicopter they actually mean Da Vinci inventing the aerial screw, and as it's name suggests, it literally is a screw... which flies. It uses a spiralling motion and a single (or joint sections to form a single) "blade". The canvas or cloth blade would be powered by people walking in the area below the blade. It worked a lot like a sycamore tree seed, instead it was powered and therefore was able to ascend against the force of gravity as it "drilled" into the air.
Leonardo first drew up sketches for the aerial screw around 1489, he was amazed by the idea of human aviation as nobody had yet invented a machine which was capable of flying with people. He thought of many other aviation devices such as the mechanical wings, the ornithopter/flying machine and the flying wing. Due to the danger and difficulty of building them however, they were never built. Even though his sketches were in detail with notes, suggesting maybe that he had planned for them to be built in the future or maybe by others, however modern scientists believe that if it was built it wouldn't be capable of flying due to weight constrictions. The notes contained instructions how to operate the aerial screw as well.
Leonardo first drew up sketches for the aerial screw around 1489, he was amazed by the idea of human aviation as nobody had yet invented a machine which was capable of flying with people. He thought of many other aviation devices such as the mechanical wings, the ornithopter/flying machine and the flying wing. Due to the danger and difficulty of building them however, they were never built. Even though his sketches were in detail with notes, suggesting maybe that he had planned for them to be built in the future or maybe by others, however modern scientists believe that if it was built it wouldn't be capable of flying due to weight constrictions. The notes contained instructions how to operate the aerial screw as well.
I did NOT make this video, it was by wolframmathematica