Leonardo da Vinci and Human Flight

Study of wing articulation. From da Vinci’s notebooks, circa 1487 - 1490.[1]

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most influential and prolific thinkers in human history. He is most famous for his paintings, but the man was a true polymath, and he studied and thought about myriad subjects. There is an obsessive curiosity that surrounds his oeuvre, and there doesn’t seem to be a limit to what he would explore. Some of these subjects include the visual arts, architecture, mathematics, engineering, anatomy, astronomy, cartography, and flight. For our purposes here, we’ll focus on his quest for human flight, which he pursued from the late 1480’s to the mid 1490’s.

I began this post with a sketch of a bat-like wing from da Vinci’s notebooks. He was keenly interested in the flight of bats and birds, and he dedicated many pages to understanding how these creatures manage to fly. This was a common inspiration for early studies into human flight, and da Vinci’s first forays into flight were wing articulations inspired by bats and birds. The next two sketches show mechanisms for wing-like devices, which articulate in various ways.

Study of an articulated wing mechanism. From da Vinci’s notebooks, circa 1490 - 1493.[1]

Concept for testing the load tolerance of a wing mechanism. From da Vinci’s notebooks, circa 1487 - 1490.[1]

These isolated studies of wing-like mechanisms led to more developed ideas for flying machines. The bulk of these studies relied on human muscle power in order to fly the crafts. Unfortunately, human-powered flight is impossible, since human muscles alone can’t produce enough lift. Still, da Vinci believed it was possible, and he came up with some fascinating designs as he sketched through his ideas.

Sketch of an air-screw mechanism. From da Vinci’s notebooks, circa 1487 - 1490.[1]

Pictured above is a small sketch of an air-screw flying machine, taken from da Vinci’s notebooks circa 1487-1490. This design was meant to spin around a central axis and ‘screw through’ the air, creating lift by pushing the air down. Da Vinci adapted the idea from a design in Mariano Taccola’s treatise De ingeniis, but da Vinci drew the diameter of his machine at 10 meters (33 feet), while Taccola’s design was for a small child’s toy.[2] It’s an interesting and beautiful object, but much too heavy to get of the ground. It does loosely resembles an early helicopter, however, which also operates by pushing air down through a set of spinning blades.

Study of a flying machine. From da Vinci’s notebooks, circa 1487 - 1490.[1]

The sketches above and below show da Vinci’s design for an an ornithopter, which is a flying machine that generates lift from flapping its wings. This is arguably the most well-known of da Vinci’s flying machines, and he was working through a few design elements in these sketches. The machine would be operated by a single person who would lie down on a central board (above sketch), or be strapped into a harness (below sketch). The two wings would operate through a system of ropes and pulleys, with the operator’s legs providing power by working two small stirrups at the opposite end. Pushing down on one stirrup caused the wings to move down, while pushing down on the other stirrup caused the wings to move up. Do this over and over, and the wings flap up and down like a bird.

Da Vinci seemed to understand that leg power wouldn’t be enough on its own, so in the sketch below he includes a hand-crank at the front of the machine so all four limbs could work together to power the wings. He also includes a small sketch of a rudder connected to the operator’s head, which would be used to steer the craft through the air. The end result is a machine that utilizes the entire human body, thus maximizing the amount of power generated by any single person.

Study of a flying machine and rudder. From da Vinci’s notebooks, circa 1487 - 1490.[1]

Study of a vertically-standing bird-winged flying machine. From da Vinci’s notebooks, circa 1487 - 1490.[1]

A third, much larger flying machine is pictured above, with a wingspan over 20 m.[3] This machine is also human-powered, with a single operator standing in a gondola, controlling one set of wings by working two pedals with his feet, and controlling a second set of wings with with his arms. As with his other designs, the weight of this machine makes it much too heavy to fly solely on human power. Da Vinci still put much time and thought into the design, and the net effect is a sketch that blurs the edges between human and machine. The operator seems to be part of the machine, deftly integrated with the mechanisms surrounding him.

Study of wing function. From da Vinci’s notebooks, circa 1505.[1]

Da Vinci put lots of time and energy into the human-powered flying machines described above, but after his studies in the late 1480’s it seems he realized the futility of these attempts and briefly gave up on his quest for flight. After a few years he returned to the subject, and re-focused his efforts on studying how birds fly. He dedicated many pages to this, and around 1505 he published his Codex on the Flight of Birds, which examined how birds fly in an attempt to understand and recreate it. The sketch above is from the second phase of his studies, showing an idea for an articulated wing. His studies from this phase didn’t include any flying machines, but rather smaller, less detailed sketches. After this second phase of study, da Vinci wouldn’t return to the subject of human flight.

Da Vinci’s quest for flight is intriguing because he spent so much time and effort trying to solve human-powered flight. He was convinced that humans could fly under their own strength, and it was only after years of study and invention that he abandoned it. This ties into the larger human need for verticality, such that humans need to escape the surface of the earth, and since this need is innate within us, it begins with the power and strength of our bodies rather than the technology around us. In the end, da Vinci realized the human body alone is not built for flight. Still, when we dream of flight we fly under our own power, not under the power of something external. This is what da Vinci was trying to make real, and why he spent years of his life pursuing it.

Read more about other ideas for flying machines here.


[1]: Zöllner, Frank. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings. Köln: Taschen, 2016. 644.

[2]: ibid.

[3]: ibid.