I saw that episode. I actually thought that crew was pretty fair and
respectful of Leonardo's concept. Remember, with Leonardo you aren't usually
getting a written description, and certainly not a blueprint -- just a
glorified cocktail napkin sketch. There is a lot of interpretation involved
in just getting to a buildable plan. If they had added "spoilers" like the
aviation guy's first suggestion, that would have been bogus, but I agreed
with them that Leonardo was thinking of wing-warping all along. Moreover, if
Leonardo had ever got off his duff and actually tried to build this thing,
he would have had to make some intelligent changes, too -- you can't hold
him to his initial draft and say "fly it and die". That's not how invention
works, now or then.
For the catapult, they had a Roman architect's written description, as well
as visual depictions in sculpture and paintings. My complaint was that they
deliberately skimped on a well-known, basic feature of the Roman design, not
that they made running changes in the interests of safety or control
(actually, they did that, too, by adding extra bracing, which turned out to
interfere with the sling travel and with the trigger mechanism; but this
just demonstrated the problem with hasty decision-making in the face of time
pressure).
--
Max Heim
'66 MGB GHN3L76149
If you're near Mountain View, CA,
it's the primer red one with chrome wires
on 1/26/06 10:21 AM, Matt Trebelhorn at matt.lists@trebelhorn.com wrote:
> Interesting example. I remember seeing a show on which they built
> what was supposed to be Leonardo da Vinci's glider.
>
> They built it, and had a test flight -- they got lift, but no
> control. So they went back to the workshop, and started talking
> about how they might improve the design for the next flight.
>
> What would that prove? That we know more about planes than daVinci
> did? Not much of a revelation -- and not nearly as interesting as
> daVinci's design.
>
> Matt
>
> On Jan 24, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Max Heim wrote:
>>
>> ... Otherwise, what was the point of the entire exercise?
>> It was like reconstructing the Wright Flyer, then deciding they
>> didn't have
>> enough time to fabricate a replica Wright engine, and substituting
>> a modern
>> light plane engine instead... or a rubber band.
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