Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy. He was the
illegitimate son of Ser Piero, a Florentine notary and landlord, but lived on the estate and
was treated as a legitimate son.
In 1483, Leonardo da Vinci drew the first model of a helicopter. It did not look
very much like our modern day “copter,” but the idea of what it could do was about the
same.
Leonardo was an artist and sculptor. He was very interested in motion and
movement and tried to show it in his art. In order to show movement, he found it helpful
to study the way things moved. One subject he liked to study was birds and how they
flew. He spent many hours watching the birds and examining the structure of their
wings. He noticed how they cupped air with their wings and how the feathers helped
hold the air. Through these studies, Leonardo began to understand how birds were able
to fly.
Like many other men, Leonardo began to dream of the day when people would be
able to fly. He designed a machine that used all the things he had learned about flight,
and thus became the first model of a helicopter.
Poor Leonardo had only one problem, however. He had no way to give the
necessary speed to his invention. You see, motors had not yet been invented and speed
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was an important part of the flying process. It would be another four hundred years
before the engine was invented and another fifty years before it was put to the test in an
airplane. Leonardo’s dream of a helicopter finally came to pass in 1936.
The Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist, Leonardo died on