Amongst all, I would like to pay tribute to one of the world’s greatest geniuses: Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo from Vinci).
I am quite sure that everyone has heard of Leonardo and his famous painting, the Mona Lisa. Some may have seen it in the Louvre, Paris, and some may even have had the opportunity to see the other disputed “older/earlier” version of a “younger” Mona Lisa when it was discovered in 2012. (It was exhibited in Singapore late 2014/early 2015).
However, despite being so famous, I doubt many knew that he died on 2nd May (1519) and is buried in France.
I was drawn to Leonardo during my university days after being shown some of his paintings at the London’s National Gallery. Being an art enthusiast and a young engineering student, I was immediately impressed by the genius of this Renaissance man. With his many intellectual pursuits, besides being a painter, sculptor and architect, Leonardo was also a military engineer, a mathematician, a scientist, a botanist and many more…
With the discovery of his notes, scholars agree that Leonardo was also a great visionary inventor beyond his time! Thanks to IBM and modern day computing, we are now able to look at the models of some of Leonardo’s inventions and concepts: flying machine, parachute, multi-barrel machine gun, submarine, diving suit, helicopter etc. Featured below are images taken during my visit to the “reconstructed” workshop, the armoured chariot/tank (left), self-propelled cart/automobile (right). In today’s robotic age, might you also be surprised that Leonardo had even thought of the design of a “Robot Knight”?