Leonardo Da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy. He was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero, a Florentine notary and landlord, but lived on the estat

Leonardo Da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452
in Vinci, Italy. He was the illegitimate son of Ser
Piero, a Florentine notary and landlord, but
lived on the estate and was treated as a
legitimate son.
In 1483, Leonardo Da Vinci drew the first model
of a helicopter. It did not lo ok very much like

our modern day copter, but the idea of what it
could do was about the same.
Leonardo was an artist and sculptor. He was
very interested in motion and movement and
tried to show it in his art. I n order to show
movement, he found it helpful to study the way
thing s moved. One subject he liked to study
was birds and how they flew. He spent many
hours watching the birds and examining the
structure of their wings. He noticed how they
cupped air with their wings and how the
feathers helped hold the air. Through these
studies, Leonardo began to understand how
birds were able to fly.
Like many other men, Leonardo began to dream
of the day when people would be able to fly. He
designed a machine that used all the thing s he
had learned about flight, and thus became the
first model of a helicopter.
Poor Leonardo had only one problem, however.
He had no way to give the necessary speed to
his invention. You see, motors had not yet been
invented and speed was an important part of
the flying process. It would be another four
hundred years before the engine was invented
and another fifty years before it was put to the
test in an airplane. Leonardo s dream o f a
helicopter finally came to pass in 1936.
The Italian painter, sculptor, architect,
engineer, and scientist, Leonardo died on
May 2, 1519, and was buried in the cloister of
San Fiorentino in Amboise.