Leonardo´s Lost Robots

Leonardo's Lost Robots reinterprets Leonardo da Vincis mechanical design work, revealing a new level of sophistication not recognized by art historians or engineers. By identifying his major technological projects, the book reinterprets Leonardo s legacy of notes, showing that apparently unconnected fragments from dispersed manuscripts actually comprise cohesive designs for functioning automata. Using the rough sketches scattered throughout almost all of Leonardo s notebooks, the author has reconstructed Leonardos programmable cart, which was the platform for other automata: a Robot Lion, a Robot Knight, and a hydraulically powered automaton for striking a bell. Through a readable, lively narrative, Mark Rosheim explains how he reconstructed da Vinci s designs. In a foreword the world-renowned Leonardo scholar Carlo Pedretti interprets the significance of these reconstructions for our understanding of Leonardos oeuvre.