The Da Vinci Robot
A mechanical knight, half a millennium before the cyborg
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Leonardo da Vinci
When you hear the word “robot”, you probably picture something built with advanced technology, guided by robotics, maybe even controlled by artificial intelligence. But the very first robot in history may actually date back to 1492 or 1495. I know, I’m sorry, my Italian side gets a bit carried away here, forgive me, but around that time, two Italians did two extraordinary things: Columbus set foot on a new continent, and Leonardo da Vinci designed what appears to be the world’s first robot. And it wasn’t just a theoretical sketch or a vague concept. It was a real mechanical knight, complete with armor, and capable of standing up, moving its arms, turning its head, and even mimicking some human motions.
The Knight’s Automaton
The Da Vinci robot—the Knight’s Automaton—is in the Codex Atlanticus, Leonardo’s most extensive collection of drawings and writings. The sheet 579r contains a jumble of technical sketches: pulleys, a drum, clockwork mechanisms, gears, a helmet, and parts of a suit of armor. At first glance, they seem unrelated. But hints of the automaton also appear in other notes scattered throughout Leonardo’s notebooks. And here lies one of the greatest challenges for modern scholars trying to reconstruct his inventions: the fragmentation of the material. There’s rarely a clear, step-by-step guide-just a brilliant mind thinking out loud over hundreds of pages.
Tha Rosheim’s attempt
The automaton was designed as a mechanical soldier in medieval armor. It was made of wood on the inside, with leather and metal parts. It could move its head and arm, thanks to a clever system of cables and wheels. One of the first attempts at a reconstruction came in 1996, led by Mark Rosheim, an American robotics expert, in collaboration with the History of Science Museum - Museo Galileo in Florence. Then, in 2002, Rosheim built a working model of the automaton for a BBC documentary. That same year, a team of engineers rebuilt the robot knight based on Leonardo’s original sketches, and the result was remarkable: the robot worked exactly as intended—five centuries after its conception.
Paper, pencil and wood
Today, we’re amazed by the robots of Boston Dynamics or Tesla’s cutting-edge technology. But Leonardo da Vinci worked with paper, pencil and wood, and he only had candlelight for illumination. He showed us that genius isn’t tied to its own time. It’s always ahead of its time, sometimes centuries ahead. We shouldn’t forget that. It’s not the tools that make the artist, the writer, the inventor, but rather the artists, the writers, the inventors who give meaning to the tools they use.
Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
Leonardo da Vinci
Oh, this is most cool! I think Leonardo a much more enlightened genius than others since he achieved great feats, despite as you say, using paper and pencils.
Fascinating Michael! A close friend of mine — John Gaughn is a magic builder and has built many props for our shows in the past. Is also one of the worlds most renowned expert on automatons, And has rebuilt and restored many of the worlds most famous ones.
While in Monte Carlo one time, I was able to tour the famous Automata museum, which is not open to the public. You can visit it by invitation only.
Here is a video of John’s famous Antonio Divalo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ws4YyozKOw