Leonardo da Vinci - Bicicletta

sketchfab

In the Codex Atlanticus (folio 133v) of Leonardo da Vinci lies a design for a bicycle created with graphite pencil and dated around 1493 that astounds for its ingenious conception, and can be considered the ancestor of modern bicycles. It is made of wood and equipped with a fixed support to rest hands on, an anterior fork and posterior fork, a horizontal frame connecting two equal-sized wheels with hubs and spokes, a central shaft, a gearing system placed at the center of the frame, which in turn features a transmission chain linking it to a gear on the rear drive wheel's hub, a saddle with suspension... In other words, this sketch encompasses the most important mechanical inventions that would laboriously emerge only three-four hundred years later.