Leonardo Da Vinci's Bad Ideas

Explore the fascinating genius and human flaws of Leonardo da Vinci! From his ingenious flying machines to his impractical diving suits, discover Da Vinci's lesser-known, unsuccessful inventions. Join us on this captivating journey!
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[@stuartrobinson1188]

Terry pratchett had the best description of da Vinci with the character Leonard of quirm. Who is constantly unconsciously doodling terrible functional world changing machines in the margins of books without really being conscious of what he had created

[@r.awilliams9815]

"For when you need to move mountains out of the way."

[@remliqa]

Meh, I prefer Bloody Stupid Johnson .

[@intergalactic92]

"I’ve invented this game with tiles covered in letters, and the players scrabble around to collect them and to make words, scoring points based on where they place them on the board. I call it: Making-words-with-letter-covered-tiles." For although Leonard of Quirm is a genius he is lousy at naming things.

[@pooryorick831]

Yes. Lord Vetinari kept him in a room where he had all the playthings he could possibly want. The ultimate idea man. I can't remember if the scorpion pit was one of Leonard's ideas. Might have been.

[@OtakuUnitedStudio]

I liked at the end of the one book when he stopped and looked at his plans for a _nuclear bomb_ and then rather thoughtfully watched as it was engulfed in flames. The one time he really did understand what he had done, and took care of it before someone else saw.

[@alm5992]

7:28 To quote Fry and professor Farnsworth in Futurama: Fry: "Wow, could that thing really fly!?" Farnsworth: "Of course not, that thing is as aerodynamic as a sofa!"

[@theaxer3751]

I'm fairly certain someone built a couch paraglider, so what exactly are you trying to say?

[@moogle68]

@@theaxer3751 well if what you say is true, OP's point still stands, because it would've been the paraglider that was aerodynamic, not the couch suspended below it.

[@evanr.2586]

In his biography of Leonardo, Walter Isaacson discusses that Leonardo earned most of his income by staging stage plays. Some historians theorize the many of Leonardo's inventions were designs for stage props. Several of the flying machines look like that could be plausible. Of course that's just a theory. But I think it is an interesting one.

[@odysseusrex5908]

Fascinating!

[@RaelNikolaidis]

Great book!

[@missyouwish88]

When he lived in France the last few years of his life, he was supposedly a set designer for plays & dances for Francis I

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

It's also worth recognizing that a lot of these things probably were fundraising for further development. The diving suit in particular wouldn't be useful as a weapon as such, but it could potentially have had some use for salvage operations if a ship did go down in shallower water. Or potentially for helping to install underwater fortifications against ships, sort of like a minefield with debris rather than literal mines. And some wouldn't have worked at the time for the simple reason that the necessary materials hadn't yet been developed. If there had been a need to fall from higher heights, I'm sure they could have worked out a way of making the frame for the parachute lighter as it just needs to maintain enough of the shape to capture the wind and take some of the pressure off of the stitching. He did hit it out of the ballpark a few times, but people tend to forget about just how many bad, or impractical, ideas it can take to generate a few world changing gems.

[@bile73]

Editor please stop the glitch fades

[@J3FF4SON]

I second this comment

[@Pikkonuos]

Third

[@ratdad48]

Yes Yes. But don't hold your breath.

[@FLPhotoCatcher]

And, is Simon meant to be out of focus?

[@dalewier9735]

My ears! ...My EARS ... (seriously, lose that crap)

[@THE-X-Force]

That "digital distortion" effect is annoying af .. bzzzzt!

[@allesklar221]

Thank you, it REALLY is..

[@georgehh2574]

I don't mind it really

[@Black-Sun__x]

I'm easily annoyed and it didn't bother me at all.

[@ratdad48]

​@@Black-Sun__xYep. I can see how your comment can annoy people.

[@ratdad48]

​@@allesklar221Yes, it is, but it want stop. His producer ( maybe him) thinks it clever.

[@ZOB4]

Feels weird to hear Simon talk about Da Vinci without telling a story about how thought it was Da Vin-see for the longest time

[@NathanaelNewton]

The glitch sound effect volume is what happens when the editor doesn't wear headphones while editing 😮

[@MthFknIceCream]

No.

[@allanshpeley4284]

They should have titled this, "Leonardo Da Vinci's Good Ideas, Most of Which Worked With Some Fine Tuning".

[@missyouwish88]

Came here to say that 😆

[@Sanquinity]

Yea for most of them I thought "he was on the right track though..."

[@missyouwish88]

@@Sanquinity Oh, he 100% was. He just had the bad/good luck of being ahead of his time. I think if he were alive in our time, all his inventions wouldn't be as remarkable. There's this adorable 2009 kids book called Neo Leo that explains all the things he thought up that (technically) could've worked in an easy fun way. It's great.

[@michaeljohnangel6359]

@@missyouwish88 So, if I imagine a rocket ship that can fly through black holes, does that make me an inventor?

[@michaeljohnangel6359]

@@Sanquinity So, if I imagine a rocket ship that can fly through black holes, does that make me an inventor?

[@charleschristianson2730]

If he had developed a working diving suit, people would've figured out a use for it. To call it a "bad idea" because it didn't make it past the red tape is simply wrong.

[@ARabidPie]

Exactly. Maybe it wasn't practical for the military at that level of development, but the harbormaster likely would have loved having it on hand to recover goods lost overboard by clumsy dockhands or to do work on the footings of piers and bridges and such.

[@magnemoe1]

This first practical use of diving suits was for salvage. Might be recovering cannons from Vasa It was pretty different however,

[@1112viggo]

Yeah, just of the top of my head I'm thinking pearl diving, shipwreck salvage operations, bridge construction and the study of sea life. I wonder why he pitched it as a military invention of all things.

[@Teaman313]

​@1112viggo 🤔 hmm.. I'm no historian, but I guess that just like it is today, military contracts were extremely lucrative back then. Human nature ensured that war has always been a good business for suppliers and contractors. And since patent offices didn't exist back then, it kind of makes sense that he would try to pitch his inventions to the military. This is just pure conjecture on my side. (Edited grammatical errors)

[@odysseusrex5908]

@@1112viggo Because that was what the various leaders of Italian city states were most interested in.

[@ChickenMan210]

Even bad ideas and total failures have a positive lesson, "don't do that again".

[@QwertiusMaximus]

He's one Donatello short of Ninja Turtles.

[@joelellis7035]

That's one turtle short of a pizza party!

[@negativeindustrial]

Our host looks a bit like the Ninja Turtle Donatello, now that you mention it. 🤔

[@cwg73160]

@@negativeindustrialNo.

[@The-Sycophant-Fox]

​@@joelellis7035the pizza stunted his lifespan

[@screwthisin]

That's not Cowabunga if him

[@crichtonbruce4329]

No use for a functional diving suit in the 1500s. Hmm... The primary use for the first successful diving suits was salvage operations. As such, if Leonardo's design worked, it would have found some happy customers.

[@stevejester5658]

Key word being "functional" and not "theorized drawing"

[@jaythompson5102]

Pearl diving maybe?

[@edwardscott3262]

Maybe someone should mention how Aristotle wrote of using primitive dive bells in the 4th century BC. Or how for a very long time ships sinking with extremely valuable stuff worth bringing back up was going on. Throughout all of recorded history a functional diving suit would have found use. One thing I hate about Pop history is the hur der look at dem dum peoples constant throughout.

[@jespado]

Just look at how many cannons they salvaged from the Swedish Wasa ship that sank in 1628.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@stevejester5658 Yes, and keep in mind that he was proposing it to the navy as a weapon rather than as a way of recovering expensive weapons. And he just had a theoretical drawing, he was asking for what is essentially venture capital to see if it could be created.

[@vernonzehr]

I hate to be "that guy" but seriously, does anyone like those ridiculous annoying, and distracting transitions? They are so annoying it breaks the flow and presentation of the narrative. It adds ZERO, NADA, NOTHING to the content or presentation quality. Other than the transitions the content on this channel is always fantastic.

[@kyle857]

They also need go edit out his quick inhales. They are distracting.

[@RendallRen]

Can you be more specific?

[@triggerlyon9478]

And your information/educational channel is.. ....

[@matthoover3674]

You LOVE being that guy, don't lie.

[@TheMelorino]

​@@triggerlyon9478can't be critical unless you do this. Fax

[@greenredblue]

The most important thing I learned from this is that even da Vinci felt the need to pad his resume.

[@davidliskey3553]

There was a show on discovery channel where they built some of his designs, including that tank, pretty cool, most worked, they fixed flaws in some designs and made them work. Really good show

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

I'll need to look into that, because that sounds awesome.

[@katyungodly]

Was it Mythbusters? I know they tested some ancient weapon designs but I don't remember if they did Da Vinci designs.

[@davidliskey3553]

@@katyungodly called doing Da Vinci was on Discovery in 2009

[@WessyD123]

Failures or not, Da Vinci was a straight up genius for his day....

[@ThorParker]

4:20 I get it!!! It was to destroy ships carrying gold and then being able to bring up their valuable resources, for which the army would benefit greatly through reinvesting the income into warfare, damaging the economy of the opposition, or even potentially recovering weapons for reuse.

[@andyaskew1543]

I think the point is that Da Vinci was able to produce concepts so far ahead of their time that the technology necessary to produce them had not even been invented yet. I don't see any of this as a failure.

[@missyouwish88]

Same here. To paraphrase Howard Stark's quote from Iron Man 2, he really was limited by the technology of his time.

[@michaeljohnangel6359]

@@missyouwish88 So, if I imagine a rocket ship that can fly through black holes, does that make me an inventor?

[@michaeljohnangel6359]

So, if I imagine a rocket ship that can fly through black holes, does that make me an inventor?

[@theaxer3751]

​@@michaeljohnangel6359 Yes. Inventors try to make the currently impossible possible, and sometimes they do not immediately succeed.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@michaeljohnangel6359 Only if it is eventually created and you developed some portion of what it eventually required. I think that DaVinci was an inventor in the sense that some of it did work, or was made to work without much additional ideas. However, he's arguably more important as a visionary than as an inventor. One of the issues that folks like DaVinci have is that some of their ideas are so far ahead of their time that it's difficult to establish which ones are ahead of their time and which ones are just fantasy. And sometimes, even the fantasy ideas wind up having some pretty significant real world impact. Nobody knew definitively that it was possible for humans to fly using heavier than air planes until the Wright Brothers built one that did work and could be modified to become practical. It was highly suspected to be possible, and other inventors were close, but people had been trying for quite some time before they got the key components in place to actually do it. Same goes with the space race, people had dreamed of it for as long as there were people to see the moon, but until somebody actually got to space, it was a legitimately open question as to whether it was even possible. Today there are people who still don't believe it's possible, in large part due to the radiation exposure.

[@paulheinrich7645]

Wow. No advertisements. This is a first in forever. Thx, Simon.

[@agneslawson9276]

They just auto play in our heads now. Just me??

[@gixxerhoschi]

we thank Squerspace for the Video... or Keeps... or the underwear company

[@BabyMakR]

I could have sworn I saw a keeps ad read!!!

[@DMBVR4]

The sponsors saw all the glitch transitions and opted to sit this one out.

[@megaflux7144]

the diving suit would have worked well for looting the ships sunk by a cannon ball.

[@mikchrungBLADES]

Bad ideas leads to improvement and new ideas. It teaches us what works and what doesn't. Without bad ideas there would be no varieties and excitement in the world.

[@vaibanez17]

IMO, being even that close to a working flight apparatus in 1480 is worth praise, even if his exact models wouldn't have worked without changes and modifications.

[@Specter_1125]

A lot of these aren’t “bad ideas”. Just ones that haven’t had a chance to be iterated on.

[@richardbrewis436]

Thanks SideProjects. Good video about Leonardo da Vinci and his wacky inventions! A much lighter subject than recent political articles but, then again we all love human history! Keep em' coming!!

[@athena8794]

You do realize this isn't Into the Shadows, right? It's SideProjects. Thus the lighter subject matter.

[@richardbrewis436]

@@athena8794 Oh, my mistake. Somebody take it down...I feel so embarrased !

[@ALA9E]

⁠@@richardbrewis436lol we all do it. You can delete by pressing three dots in right hand corner

[@gamerjaqi7873]

Really thought it was a joke because Simon has 11 channels

[@richardbrewis436]

@@ALA9E ThanksALA9E, I've corrected my comment to clear up my mistake. I hope not too many people read it, ouch!!

[@chrisyacoback6320]

Absolutely excellent content. Thank you

[@davidponseigo8811]

As brilliant as he was he was entitled to make a few mistakes and bad inventions. Most of us can't say the same thing.

[@Sanquinity]

Most of his supposed bad inventions were still on the right track though. So less bad ideas and more incomplete ideas. Possibly often limited by the technology of his time not being advanced enough to make his ideas a reality yet.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@Sanquinity These are cherry picked examples, but people underestimate just how many bad ideas creative geniuses often go through before they even get to the point of being worth recording. Then of those ones, there's a bunch more that get set aside for one reason or another and it's just a tiny fraction of them that even get any sort of real action taken to create. These all have flaws, but as you note, eventually something similar was created that did work. In several cases, like with the tank, there were other inventions that were required to make it actually work, and in the case of the flying machines, he had most of the necessary elements there, the engineering team made that work mostly with stuff they found in his drawings. Actually taking action to make things real is important, but people underestimate just how hard it is to be a visionary. Just creating ideas that can be acted on isn't necessarily easy, especially if you're more forward thinking than just a simple modification or improvement on what we've got. That's why so many companies are started by duos, one that's better with the vision and the other that's more business savvy.

[@steveb6386]

A few of what he did invent that are used today: The pawl (Used on gears and is actuated in the transmission on an automatic transmission when 'P' is elected), The tank/armored car. Made Guttenberg's printing press semi automatic. The hang glider. The parachute. Method of using sprockets and chains to drive wheels. A crane that rotated. A type of artillery gun. A cantilever bridge that could be assembled quickly without tools to cross rivers. The diving helmet.

[@Jabbadoor2]

Just some feedback from 1 random viewer. I stumbled over the channel a couple of weeks ago, and ended up bingewatching also most every video dating back 1½ year or so. :-) In other words; I really like your content. However, lately you've started using some sort of "breaking up effect", And I can't say why, but it really gets under my skin. To the point where I don't really want to keep watching, because all i'm thinking about, is preparing myself for the next time it comes. It's like nails at a charkboard. 😞

[@HermanVonPetri]

Yes, thank you! EDITOR: Please stop using the digital glitch noise. It was painfully annoying when CDs would skip and it's still painfully annoying in these videos.

[@simonmeadows7961]

Have you discovered all of Simon's other 387 channels? Or is this just your first foray into the Whistlerverse?

[@THE-X-Force]

Especially bad when you're wearing headphones.

[@Baskinbzier]

​@@simonmeadows7961 Yeah lmaoooo ive been a subscriber for years and years but eventually i was like these guys look a like lmao

[@ratdad48]

I agree with you completely. Never fails when something is going well someone has just got to come up with an idea to "fork" it all up! I quess it kinda clever to someone's juvenile way of thinking. Do you think he will read your comment or mine? I think not. This stupid break away crap and noise will persist.

[@RamboVee]

Brilliant! Learned all new stuff today. Thanks Simon and team.

[@hesjustthisguyyaknow]

in his defense, he came up with basic ideas and then pitched them to benefactors. if nobody paid him to develop them, he didn't because spending his own money to develop a device that had no buyer wasn't going to feed him. that doesn't necessarily make them bad ideas.

[@killerkraut9179]

he came up with basic ideas extremely debatabel!

[@darthvegan]

Many present day innovators consider having a multitude of ideas (even bad ones) a good thing, as rejecting an idea offhand is stifling to creativity.

[@mustangiiii]

Simon of Kent, the renaissance man of KZbin

[@JKlein713]

Sir Simon of Kent, peasant! 😂

[@jonc-1989]

Is Simon from Kent? I had no idea he is local to me

[@MattCombs-ge7ki]

That has a nice ring to it

[@cleverusername9369]

​@@jonc-1989he's from Kent but lives in Prague

[@TitularHeroine]

I'm gonna make up a character called that. Nice sound!

[@thrashmetaldave]

I remember seeing a documentary maybe 20 years ago where Jacquie Cozens tested the design of Da Vinci's diving suit and found it worked well in shallow water

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

That doesn't surprise me. There's a few things that need to be added if you want to go deeper. Also, keep in mind that the air pumps were a lot less sophisticated than they were in the 19th century, so just pumping the air down with the right bits of diving gear, still likely would have ended badly.

[@killerkraut9179]

@@SmallSpoonBrigade The earlyer Konrad Kyser diving suit idea was tested with 4 men pumping with ballows it did work!

[@JesusRN16]

In terms of his resume, he may just have had a knack for words. 1- a single board of wood over a small gap 2- using a bigger rock 3- a miniature motor model Potentially, these things fit the descriptions. It's not his fault the employers misunderstood 😂

[@TitularHeroine]

Could we get videos on Jung & Freud's best & worst ideas? Regardless, thank you for everything!

[@cursedfishtanx9087]

I remember watching an IMAX film called Adreline Rush at Boston Science Museum's dome-shaped IMAX theater which featured DaVinci' s parachute design being tested.

[@lorgpanther8920]

Love the content, hate the glitch/buzz transitions

[@tnh723]

You sir are relentless. Your videos are among the very best on the interwebs. If you go on vacation, millions will cheer for your much needed rest and are assured that you will return refreshed and rewarded for all these great videos :-)

[@ALA9E]

And talking even faster

[@joshuastrawser9160]

Leonardo da Vinci had a lot of ideas. Like a lot of men throughout history who had a lot of ideas, some of them were quite good. The social contract dictates that we not mention the others. One day, for example, Elon Musk's flamethrower will join that latter list of things better left forgotten.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

We definitely should mention the others because it's rather informative of how he went about having all those ideas. Walt Disney used a 3 room approach wherein the first room there literally were no ideas too stupid to mention. A second room where they would take that list and cull out the obvious ones that had some sort of significant issues. And a 3rd room where none but the stongest ideas were permitted to survive. People forget just how many ideas there are out there, if people haven't had an idea, it's far morel likely to be a terrible idea than one worth pursuing.

[@flyflybaby2723]

The fact that he *thought* of diving suits *at that time* is *more than mind-blowing!*

[@killerkraut9179]

Konrad Kyser and Hans Talhoffer hade the diving suit idea earlyer! It wasnt that mind-blowing!

[@LivingManuscript]

Diving suits seem to have been an idea for at least a little time before Davinci as well, I know Talhoffer had a drawing of something similar and it may (IIRC) have been in copies of Bellefortis. The Middlealdercentret in Denmark tested one out with some success; they lean towards it being used for salvage operations :)

[@jasmijnariel]

Imagine if he could return to this age and see his ideas and inventions EVERYWHERE in the world😊❤

[@Fanatical_Empathy]

Now with my critical comment out of the way I wanted to give you guys some praise. I love hearing that 1 of the most celebrated works and all of humanity is a copy from appear for da Vinci. I think it's so humbling when I was in college and I would be copying other artists work and people would be copying my work to think that something of mine might have been copied at some point that might be valued for some reason is kind of interesting idea.

[@mndlessdrwer]

Ornithopters are very challenging to make even with modern production methods because the means of generating lift are far more convoluted compared to a fixed wing. The flapping motion isn't just swinging a fixed wing shape up and down, because that would generate the same amount of force in both directions, resulting in neutral lift and ending up back where you started. When a bird flaps its wings it creates a large surface area during the downstroke in order to capture and move as much air as possible before pitching the wings upward and folding them in to reduce drag on the upstroke, thus allowing the bird to generate more upward lift than downward lift, sustaining flight in this way. Insects do this solely through adjusting the pitch of their wings and are actually a better biological mechanism to attempt to mimic in order to create an ornithopter. Unfortunately, the necessary stiffness of the wing material for the scale of an ornithopter would be entirely impossible to create with the materials of that time and would be considerably difficult even with modern composites. Not to mention that the force needed would be rather extreme and the flight of insects is able to work properly due primarily to their larger wing surface area compared to the weight of their bodies. If you wanted something like dragonfly wings to be able to lift the weight of an average human then you'd probably end up needing a 10ft wing span, which is impractically large.

[@MARVINMotorSport]

Great content Simon... Can you check your focus? You are slightly blurry to me and I really notice it 😊 the cactus on the shelf is pin sharp.

[@dontwanadisplaynameonutube2951]

8:20 I think his parachute perfectly highlights his ideas, unpolished. because it’s the first ideas out to paper, what would be the easiest way to make a parachute? Certainly not cutting and stitching material into a semi round semicircle. Take a bolt of linen, cut out 3/4 triangle, stitch and your done. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he used a square cube and left the bottom open.

[@gorilladisco9108]

Leonardo's diving suit could be used to put stakes around harbors to force hostile ships to break formation which then the defending forces could pick one by one.

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

My non-Italian brain will forever and ever conflate and confuse Leonardo da Vinci with Galileo Galilei. I have no idea why I have such trouble telling them apart. They are the Dylan McDermott & Dermot Mulroney of the Renaissance.

[@bobbyolivo9163]

Loved the video. And I learned some new things, like I had never even heard of Taccola before. So thank you, always enjoy a new rabbit hole to go down 🙂 But that's not what "begging the question means". I'm sorry, it's just a pet peeve of mine 🙃 Otherwise awesome video, I'll even subscribe, which I literally never do 😂

[@killerkraut9179]

There where many person like this in the late medieval age and early post medieval Renaissance like Roberto valturio ,Guido da Vigevano with his crank wagon! In the german language areas existed Konrad Kyser with his Bellifortis und Ritters Martin Löffelholz von Kolberg with his Löffelholz-Codex ! Germany hade a big Kriegsbuch (Warbook) and Feuerwerks Buch (Firework Book) tradition in his time!

[@jamesmcpherson1590]

Perhaps he got the idea for the pyramid parachute from a source noted in the description itself. Perhaps he had seen a "tent made of linen" as a temporary shelter for a traveler and concluded that the design could be repurposed to arrest a fall if held onto from below by a cross brace.

[@wyattstrickland4348]

It’s been a long time since I’ve stumbled across a video with you in it. It’s great to see you still making content

[@nihilistmia]

His parachute design had one major flaw and that was it had no opening in the top

[@dianadavis5002]

I agree with the other comments. Get rid of the glitch transfers. They serve no purpose.

[@vsznry]

Love the Assassins Creed clips.

[@fathertimegaming17]

You say that his flying machines wouldn't have worked without extensive reworks, but I am also quite sure that the Wright flyer was not their first design.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

I think the difference is that the Wright Brothers pursued it to the point where they settled the question about whether or not it was possible to develop a practical flying machine. It's also kind of crazy how less than 70 years later humans weren't just routinely flying around in the air, but we'd already landed people on the Moon. That being said, the Wright Brothers were a lot closer tot he goal than DaVinci was, as there had been a lot of work done on gliders in the centuries in the mean time and the Wright Brothers had access to internal combustion engines to power it. They mostly contributed the control system and put all of the pieces together into something that could be incrementally improved into the aircraft we have today.

[@alexturnbackthearmy1907]

@@SmallSpoonBrigade Not to mention that they had VERY serious competition form europe, which could`ve easily surpassed them if their initial design wasnt just right. Everyone knew that it would be possible at some point in these years - question was who first?

[@rafagd]

Nothing is more da Vincian than surviving a massive fall only to get crushed by the parachute

[@johnoswald9143]

Off topic here but, does Simons glasses have lenses in them ?

[@ignitionfrn2223]

1:00 - Chapter 1 - Diving suit 5:10 - Chapter 2 - The many flying machines 8:00 - Chapter 3 - Parachute

[@carloshenriquezimmer7543]

One of the many theories about DaVinci's ideas beying almost always pretty close, but never actually working, is that he was suffering of eyther ADD, OCD or he was maniac-depressive. Sources of the time would always say that he would study something non-stop, not sleeping for days and eating iregularlly, than, all of a sudden, he would give up half-way. And he would never return to his previous notations; if he decided to study the same subject again he would begin everything from scatch, never building from his previous findings. Not that he would hit a road-block on his studies, he would simply stop that work, just to do it all again later. And it is ofthen mentioned that he used to spend a lot of time on doing nothing, while employed by a patron, sunken in a "pesarous" mood, and would isolate himself in his workshops, refusing to talk to people. Also, some mention that he always had a variety of works unfinished, waiting to be continued later (the Monalisa took some years to be finished), in all kinds of arts and sciences, all at the same time. When he felt like working on them, he would work on all of them at the same time, for a while. So much so that many of his paintings and sculptures were never finished or were finished by other artists, like "The Last Supper". Given that those all indicate simptoms of those 3 conditions, it is possible he suffered from at least one of them.

[@killerkraut9179]

Even if leonardo wasnt very special he was mostly just a men of his time!

[@woodhousii2445]

​@@killerkraut9179I want you to consider that maybe Leonardo WASNT a one of a kind renaissance man living in Florence Italy and that MAYBE there might be dozens of Leonardo's walking on earth in the modern day in any country and they just don't have the opportunities, privilege, money, or resources to gain recognition OR that what they're interested in isn't valued by the modern world, and even if we recognized them, we would never consider them a renaissance man, a polymath, or on the same level as Davinci, even if they were.

[@killerkraut9179]

@@woodhousii2445 I could even say many examples before or in his time!

[@Tresverde]

The parachute is to hold air for your decent it's shape could only be developed through practice

[@JohnBuckmaster-sw3wm]

I could just sit here and watch these videos and listen to Simon all day… Wait… I did

[@buinghiathuan4595]

Simon: no one have test Da vinci flying machine Ezio: hold my beer 😂

[@erikgranqvist3680]

Da Vinci had nothing over Leonardo of Quirm.

[@johnaweiss]

What you call "bad ideas" are concepts which inspired devices in later centuries which DID work. Tanks, flying machines, etc. Your comment "None of his ideas would have worked without extensive development" is true about EVERY invention -- including great ones. So that doesn't make something a "bad idea".

[@stuart940]

everyone goes on about leonardo being a genius cos he drew a picture of a helicopter before they existed, but i can draw a moonbase and no one thinks im a genius!😃

[@ratdad48]

It has to be LGBT.........friendly to make you a genius.

[@seanmalloy7249]

4:12 I'm reminded of a meme image I saved -- 'Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day. Patent "Method and Apparatus for Retrieval of Piscine Life Forms" and you're set for life'

[@sekaramochi]

sorry but need to ask? What would you choose 1) Straping a giant fan on your back jumping off a cliff and hope the parachute releases A) jumping out of a plane, with a squirrel suit on and hope the parachute opens 2) jump off a different cliff in a hang glider with No parachute to worry about 3) bungee jump from a helicopter ( don't worry like jumping off a bridge you never return to the place you jumping from ) B) being towed into the air and cut loose, in a glider and gliding back the earth ( parachutes? ) At this point you can skip to C+ please C) a hot air balloon and a basket ( parachutes ' dude seriously shut up about the leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and michė chute in 1485, we're talking about balloons in 1852 and some dudes flying a plane in 1903 ' are the safest way to earth, that's why... Sorry but the you time lines all wrong ' why ' It least one of the tmnt invented planes, helicopters and ti.e travel ' what? ' Time travel ' dude seriously. How many have we said, stop reading dan brown, its all fiction ' C+1) a Hot air balloon with a basket, as the pilot turns to you and says sorry we're out of fuel and have lose some 'ballast' he calls back to me as I throw him out of the basket. Wait a second we're almost above our house, so we can drop the sand bags on neighbors cars ' Don't ' Okeyyy what if we dropped them infront of someone's house and called down to them " there's a flood coming "...' Dzon't ' Okey.... .... what if I wrap the deflating balloon around a Telegraph pole outside our bedroom window, knocked to wake you on one knee in an open casket with a box of milk tray saying ' because the lady lov...' you close, sorry slam the window in my face screaming i fecking hate those ( sorry was previously mentioned, but this is about the forty second attempt to post, try reminder to us , save please as often as...) Don't you have an issue with updating whilst you're writing and we didn't save Sorry where was we? Oh yes hanging from a parachute hooked on overhead power cables, as we rock from side side we tap on the window again ( same window) ' same window ' Again, at this point we don't understand who's actually the poster of this post C-) a Hot air baboon shaped balloon 4 fours ) back captain William ( dude seriously back doesn't rhyme with William, try " jacks back " but dude we wasn't playing Jacks, we was playing liers dice and jacks back front or any part of him was with us when we was listening and someone shouted four thors C+) a good year blimp 4) jumping off broadstairs pier 5) climbing though and jumping out the seven sisters caves Kingsgate 6) Ramsgate caves, never been there since 8) shell grotto and free toys to grab as you walk out, banned from there ' joke Wright? ' C+1+) 37 minutes later, tap on the other window not the once said window but more like a skylight. You ask 'WHAT' Please look under your pillow. we cry out As the cables break and we fall to the ground You cover your pillow to discover an elephant C3-y) kindar eggs actually with a ring within Q1 still waiting for the answer, once you carm

[@andrewcarson5850]

I think you meant Kinder eggs. If you're going to posit such conundrums, please get your spelling rite.

[@NecromancyForKids]

Did you get artificial assistance writing this? Because it's seriously incomprehensible.

[@satcom6]

It's okay to be "that guy", but I actually enjoy it quite often. It doesn't bother me at all, and we are all entitled to our own opinion. It's completely okay (and honestly I encourage) sharing your opinions, just remember it's only your opinion, and even if others agree, that doesn't mean you right or wrong. And Simon has dedicated alot of money and spent much of his time (life) providing content that is free for us. And he may be being paid for it, but he is also providing income for others. I appreciate all of that. So don't worry about being "that guy", speak your mind freely, just make sure to give support as well. (I hope you are going to school or pursuing a career in editing, seems like you are the kind of person that could work for this channel).

[@DoctorX17]

There was an episode of Star Trek: Voyager where they ran with the concept that he was far ahead of his time - they built a glider using one of his designs, but with 24th century frame materials instead 16th century

[@killerkraut9179]

Tv producers usually dont know much about history!

[@mozart579]

Leonardo was a genius

[@killerkraut9179]

Mostly just a men of his time! genius debetabel!

[@sonjanordahl3158]

😆In da Vinchi's defense, if nobody is paying there is no point in wasting hundreds of man hours debugging designs. But yes, he did have some really bad ideas.

[@casualpanda4100]

Do a video of Euclid please

[@goldmemberpb]

Talking about the tank here just gave me ptsd flashback to AC brotherhood and its god forsaken " don't get hit" tank mission. This was fine on my PC with a nice 60 fps but back in the 360, needing to do a 6 min mission first before the tank and 30 fps tank controls made it a nightmare to fully complete it.

[@eleanorburns8686]

I enjoyed that game, but those missions were a chore, both for the non-detection requirement (turning a decent stealth game into a painful glorified "buzz wire" game) and for the rotten controls of the machines themselves. Though I will concede they functioned as well as I'd expect modern war machine concepts built with 15th Century materials and techniques to function (as in so badly, you wonder why the hell Cesare even wanted them).

[@4362mont]

If Da Vinci had never had an idea the concept of which could not be proved, or the details made to work out, he really wouldn't have been trying enogh stuff. Sometimes, you have dream it up if only to get it out of the way, or sketch it to get it out of your head, or build it to find out what doesn't work. I think at heart he was using an artist's approach on technical problems some of the time.

[@killerkraut9179]

I think there was work of Otto Lilienthal between!

[@davidponseigo8811]

The vulture rubbing its butt on Da Vinci's mouth just sounds gross and weird !

[@jozsefizsak]

Sadly, unwatchable due to endless glitches and annoying blasts of noise. You must be kidding. These idiotic fads can't end soon enough.

[@cordlefhrichter1520]

Was fine for me. Must be something wrong with your computer.

[@anonymous87654]

That crackling sound effect is just awful. Might choose to not finish videos that contain it.

[@michaeljohnangel6359]

Thank goodness!!!! it's about time that somebody pointed out to the general public that virtually none of Leonardo's "inventions" actually worked. Can you call a person an inventor if his inventions don't work? Leonardo was a brilliant painter for his time, and, we're told, a charming man and a gifted singer, but he wasn't an inventor.

[@killerkraut9179]

The Diving suit would work but he wasnt the first with a diving suit idea!

[@davidponseigo8811]

Most of us relieve ourselves in the water with or without something to go into. Seriously we all know we pee in the pool.

[@andrewcarson5850]

That's what I told the lifeguard, but he said most don't do it from the diving board.

[@sarahissersohn5495]

Not while wearing a full diving suit, my dude

[@perjohanaxell9862]

I think the last remark is the most important. These sketches are concepts never experimented with and developed. I'm sure Leornado or someone else with more of an engaging mindset could have tested and improved them had there been enough interest and money in it.

[@kali3665]

Marvel Comics did a What If comic, "What If Nick Fury Fought World War II in Space?" The reality shift was something about how Da Vinci was able to make practical use of his inventions, and that led to speeding up scientific knowledge so that we visited the moon in the 1920s. Oh, and the Dark Ages never happened because of this. Which of course is utterly impossible since the technology was simply not there. There was simply no way to create, say, heavier-than-air flight in the 15th century! That was the problem with Charles Babbage coming up with the first computer. The technology just didn't exist for actual practical development. No vacuum tubes or even the means to actually build the contraption. But it would have made an interesting cyberpunk invention.....

[@BLOXKAFELLARECORDS]

Hope everyone enjoys #johnnyx100 like Da Vinci.

[@alexturnbackthearmy1907]

Last one isnt true. His computer was literally ONE! step away from becoming first modern computer, and was never build only because of budget limitations (he developed it on his own money and stopped it only when his limited funds were unable to keep development afloat). Almost 100 years later similar machine was build, becoming the first modern computer...while being barely more advanced then machine developed decades prior.

[@nicksokolov6024]

Newton .. Bell .. Marconi.. Turning .. ( ideas do not happen in a vacuum )

[@markuhler2664]

"The tank would have been unbearably slow and couldn't operate on rough terrain." Good thing the first actual tanks didn't have problems similar to that. His flying machines were more observations of flight in nature and trying to imitate it than for people to actually use. He did this for both for engineering purposes ss well as his artistic desires. As for the Vitrvian Man, the so-called "golden proportions" had been around since the Greek philosophers discussed things. And as always, something not working isn't failure, it's a way to figure out how not to do something.

[@hellkr]

Simon! Please! Fix the camera focus issue!

[@ilai7893]

The Wright Brothers' first plane design was actually driven by manpower, so Leo's flight design was actually not bad, and in fact ahead of the time

[@Schander]

There's a theory that he didn't actually event much to begin with. He was a scholar who might've simply copied/borrowed from many ancient manuscripts he came across.

[@allanshpeley4284]

Event huh?

[@killerkraut9179]

In the late medieval age existed Konrad kysers and Guido de Vigevanos work before Leonardo!

[@chuckz2934]

Tough to watch some of these channels without Simon hosting anymore

[@allanshpeley4284]

Hardly. I've always found Simon irritating.

[@noelthorley3248]

Talhoffer had a similar design for a diving suit in his Codex. Mike Loads did a as faithful as possible recreation of it and it worked. Albeit a little limited and I certainly would not want to be in it under any body of water. But the individual doing the testing in the suit survived unscathed. Further, I am unsure how m any attempts or tests they carried out prior to the successful deployment, if they got it as good as is was on the first go, that would have been a bloody miracle.

[@killerkraut9179]

Talhoffer works are based of Konrad Kyser Bellifortis ! There was a big Bellifortis tradition!

[@missyouwish88]

The way you explain it Simon doesn't exactly prove they were bad ideas, more like they just needed a little tweaking here & there. The video's title should be more like "They technically could've worked, but...."

[@chadroberts6344]

Da Vincis Demons is an underrated show that didnt get a real chance to shine

[@peterfigueroa6731]

Why would it be a reproduction rather than an inspiration. Some assumptions seem oddly worded.

[@kaldogorath]

What if a lot of these bad ideas were just doodles of thoughts he had?

[@PracticeTaiji]

I came for Leonardo, but I stayed for the beard.

[@Nylak-Otter]

Ah, yes. Where would we be without da Vinci's advancements in the field of alchemy? 😂

[@TheScrubExpress]

Still blows my mind that the parachute actually works.

[@allanshpeley4284]

The parachute works, the diving suit works, the tank would have worked and been functional in certain circumstances, the plane designs worked with some modifications. This list is nonsense.

[@ljphoenix4341]

1:17 stop with the sound effects, editor!! I don't care about the visual transitions, but sound detracts from the video, for sure! Please

[@AlecFlackie]

They're not 'projects' they are thought exercises. The fact that he even thought of these concepts out stretches their practicalities or functionalities.

[@meeb_consumer]

For every good idea ever had, there's a hundred bad ones. The point of brainstorming is to throw everything at the board and see what sticks.

[@cerboris521]

Dunno how these can be considered bad ideas since we now have functioning and useful versions of all of these. Initial concepts should not be mistaken with completed designs.

[@clintonpangburn3698]

Can't think of anything to say because the Temu sunflower swimsuit add is too dang distracting.

[@colonelkurtz2269]

Ever try to close a Temu ad, and it resists?