The First Futurist
Leonardo da Vinci thought about some really cool machines, which he recorded in a number of journals. From flying machines and war machines to water and land machines he was so far ahead of his time that many of his inventions would not be built until the 20th century. Remember, Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 and died in 1519, so he was inventing things some 500 years before they could ever be built. So let's take a look at how he saw the future, shall we? da Vinci saw a ornithopter in our future which looks a lot like those early Wright Brothers planes that flew overhead in the late 19th century. He envisioned the aerial screw or helicopter which wouldn't be built until the 20th century. He based his designs on the flight of bats and birds. The tank wouldn't get here until the beginning of World War I in the early 20th century. What da Vinci called a 33- barreled organ, or what we call a machine gun, arrived during the U.S. civil war and made gangster movie