Five hundred years before the airplane, the tank, and the automobile, a man had already drawn them. In a notebook, with his left hand, in an Italian that still seems to speak to the future tense. There's a moment, leafing through Leonardo's codices, when you pause. Not for the beauty of the line, which is astonishing, but for something more unsettling: the sensation of looking at drawings that don't belong to their time. Leonardo da Vinci wasn't an inventor. He was a time traveler. And the world, even today, is chasing his intuitions.
Here are the five inventions that, more than any other, demonstrate how far his mind was focused on the future.
1. The aerial screw: the first helicopter in history
In 1493, Leonardo designed a machine with a gigantic screw that, by rotating, was supposed to lift into the air. The principle was exactly that of the modern helicopter: compressing air with a rotor to generate lift. It would never fly—fifteenth-century technology wouldn't allow it—but the idea was perfect. It would take almost 450 years and Igor Sikorsky for that dream to actually take flight.
2. The parachute: a pyramid of canvas against the force of gravity
"If a man has a clogged pavilion of diaper, twelve fathoms wide on each side and twelve high, he will be able to jump from any great height without harm." So wrote Leonardo. A pyramid-shaped parachute, technically impossible for the time, but mathematically correct. In 2000, skydiver Adrian Nicholas built it to Leonardo's exact dimensions and successfully jumped. Five hundred years later, it worked.
3. The tank: the war of the future designed in the Renaissance
A turtle-shaped armored platform, armed with 360-degree cannons, propelled by eight men inside via gears. It's 1487, and Leonardo had already imagined the tank, which would only appear on the battlefield in World War I. The true genius isn't in the form—it's in the idea of protecting soldiers with mobile armor, a concept that would forever change the history of warfare.
4. The diving suit: exploring the underwater world
Imagine Venice threatened by an enemy fleet. Leonardo proposes a solution: divers capable of attacking ships from below. He designs a leather diving suit with breathing tubes connected to a buoyancy aid and a urine bag, because a dive can last a long time. He even refused to reveal its details, terrified of its use in warfare. An ethical conscience, five centuries before our debate on technology.
5. The automobile: the first self-propelled vehicle in history
A wooden, horseless machine capable of moving on its own thanks to a system of loaded springs. It can even steer autonomously. It is, in effect, the first prototype automobile—and also the first self-driving robot. In 2004, the Science Museum in Florence built a working replica: Leonardo was right about every single gear.
Leonardo didn't just invent the helicopter or the parachute. He invented, once and for all, the Italian way of looking at the future: with wonder, with courage, and with the certainty that beauty and science are ultimately the same thing.
