Did Renaissance Man Leonardo da Vinci Invent the Car?

To put the date in question into context, 1,478 is 328 years before the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, 305 years before the

Recently the technical plans for Leonardo's car have been used to create a full-size working model. (Photo: Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence)

American Revolution, and 14 years before Columbus discovered the continent Ford's masterpiece was built on when he sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Needless to say, the "car" was invented an awfully long time ago.

And why all the fuss about the origin of the automobile so many centuries after the fact? Recently the technical plans for the Leonardo's car have been used to create a full-size model that is now on display, highlighting the recent expansion of Museo Leonardiano di Vinci (the Leonardiano Museum). Located in the quiet Tuscan town of Vinci, Italy, this museum specializes in Leonardo's sketches and inventions. It is the place to visit for fans of any sort of mechanical creativity, as it's solely dedicated to his intellectual genius, rather than his artistic side.

The model of the car was put from strokes of ink on the yellowed pages of the Codex Atlanticus, to a full-scale working model. The long and arduous process reportedly took years

Springs, coils and other innovations were involved in powering and steering the vehicle. (Photo: Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence)

to complete. After the drawing's discovery in 1905 by Italian scholar Girolamo Calvi, it took 70 years for someone to piece together individual springs, coils and drums seen in the design and make sense of it all.

The part that confused all who worked on the project was a set of leaf springs. To be clear, the car did not have a suspension system as modern day convention would think. Rather, the springs were a part of the car's steering system. Another stumbling block concerned the vehicle's source of power, and how it moved. The project's momentum began to grow after Italian professor Carlo Pedretti applied other designs throughout the codex to conclude that springs, coils and other innovative designs were involved in powering and steering the vehicle.