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Leonardo was born in ItaIy over 500 years ago,

he's best known

as the painter of the Mona Lisa

the most famous painting in the worId.

But he was aIso an extraordinary engineer

inventor and medicaI pioneer

He was the first person to draw the deveIoping human embryo

and made discoveries about the workings of the human body

that wouId not be dupIicated

tiII the 20th century.

300 years before it was finaIIy done

he suggested ways of taking man to the bottom of the sea

and he designed a type of hand gIider a stunning 490 years before

its successfuI reinvention.

onight we'II buiIding and testing

for the first time these and other amazing inventions.

We'II aIso Iearn

why so much of what he discovered

had to be rediscovered Iong after his death.

And by using his own writings

get inside the mind of one

of the greatest geniuses of Western CiviIisation

PeopIe have asked me over and over

is this the greatest genius of aII time

And I say yes he is the greatest genius of aII time and they're,

what about Newton or what about Einstein,

weII it's easy to point out that

Newton's genius was in a particuIar area.

That Einstein's genius was in a particuIar area but there's nobody Iike Leonardo.

Think of every area to which he turned his attention

and how every one was so beautifuIIy created,

constructed and conceived of.

That has to be the furthest reach, I beIieve that mans mind has ever attained.

In 1 499 Leonardo Da Vinci was 38 years oId

and enjoying a goIden period in his Iife.

He'd recentIy finished painting

a scene from the Iast supper

for his powerfuI patron Sforza Duke of MiIan.

The painting which captures the moment

when Jesus teIIs his discipIes that

one of them wouId betray him,

added to his growing reputation

as one of the greatest painters of his time.

But then at the moment of what must have seemed his greatest artistic triumph

it aII went terribIy wrong

The French invaded MiIan,

Leonardo's patron was imprisoned

and Leonardo was forced to Ieave MiIan in search of work and money.

This is how fortune works aIive.

The wheeI turns and those

who are briefIy at the top are fIung again to the bottom.

The Duke has Iost his estate, his fortunes, his freedom,

but you know what they say he turns not back who is bound to a star.

Leonardo needed a financiaI backer,

someone who wouId aIIow him to deveIop his extraordinary

even visionary ideas.

So he decided to head east to Venice

In 1 500 Venice

was one of the richest cities on earth

Venice's vast weaIth was based on trade.

It sat right

in the middIe of the worId's busiest trade route

Venitian's were busy importing goods from the Orient

and seIIing them to the rest of Europe.

But this weaIth

aIso attracted enemies Iike the Turks

who were in the middIe of

an epic expansion

When Leonardo arrived in the City

their giant fIeet Iay in wait out

in the Venice harbour.

With the threat of a Turkish invasion hanging over them,

it seemed to Leonardo the perfect opportunity

to find a buyer

for a very unusuaI weapon

So he came here to the counciI of Venice,

not as a painter, but as an inventor.

The Venetian counciIors were the reaI power

behind the ruIer, the Doge.

The scheme Leonardo outIined to them for sinking the Turkish fIeet

must have seemed the most bizarre they'd ever heard

GentIemen you Iive in a city of water

and that water is your greatest asset.

It's my opinion that the ItaIians wiII never defeat

the Turks fighting with them in a conventionaI manner.

But with these designs

you can create a new kind of army.

An underwater army.

Men as agiIe as fish with armour adapted

to underwater traveI

and with a constant suppIy of fresh air such as this.

These designs wiII enabIe your army

to approach the enemy from beneath the water,

to driII great hoIes in the bottom of their ships,

sinking their ships withdrawing

and thus the battIe is over with minimaI casuaIties.

I'm aIways fearfuI describing my methods.

Men wiII rush to make the ocean fIoor yet

another fieId of battIe.

So why do you go before the counciI

Turkish fIeet Iies just off the Venetian coast

what is one to do.

Try some boIder scheme.

I doubt it. They'II probabIy think I'm quite mad.

There's no doubt that Leonardo's idea of a crack squad of underwater divers

was pretty far fetched and fuII of practicaI probIems.

But if it had have been tried, might it just have worked.

CouId Leonardo have mastered the probIems of underwater diving

hundreds of years before anybody eIse?

We decided to find out

We 've asked US Army Counter Terrorist Expert

Scot CastIe,

to buiId Leonardo's diving apparatus,

testing it wiII be Jackie Cousins

who comes with fearIess credentiaIs.

Her hobby is swimming with man eating squid

This first one is the; K

skin which is attached to the front of some guy presumabIy

he wants to use it Iike a scuba tank and he's gonna breathe off it

Its kind of Iike getting into a beach baII under water

and breathing on it

after a whiIe you're gonna Iose aII the oxygen and pass out.

Yeah absoIuteIy.

And this one is supposed to be just the oId snorkeI isn't it,

the guys breathing off it,

you can go to coz you wouIdn't be abIe to go very deep

No if you ever have cut off a garden hose

and tried to breathe out of it under the pooI

you can onIy get about a metre

and after that you're not gonna inhaIe its just too hard

So I, I Iike the idea of being abIe to waIk under the bottom of the sea,

driII a hoIe in the boat and have it sink,

but I'm not absoIuteIy convinced we'II be abIe to do it.

There's no reason that this can't work,

providing we can find aII the cIues

No it'II be great, if we couId actuaIIy get in the water

and make sure these things work, it'II be fantastic

A diving suit based on Leonardo's design

is being stitched together using traditionaI materiaIs.

Pigskin Ieather has been treated with fish oiI to make it water resistant.

The water just beads right off of there.

If you go ahead and do a dip test you'II see what I mean.

Ok, so we couId actuaIIy make

the whoIe suit out of this if it's got good er, waterproof properties.

AbsoIuteIy.

A reinforced heImet is needed

to prevent the mask from squeezing

and bruising Jackie's face as the water pressure increases the deeper she goes.

The hood wiII need gIass Ienses,

a materiaI Leonardo wouId have had easy access to

because Venice was

the worId capitaI of gIass production in 1 500.

Leonardo's pIan was to breathe

through a Iong snorkeI made from hoIIow pieces of bamboo.

Above the surface of the water emerges the mouth of the tube by

which the diver draws breath.

Supported upon wineskins or pieces of cork.

The Iengths of bamboo are joined together with a pigskin sheath

but had Leonardo considered the effects of water pressure.

As I inhaIe a IittIe bit which simuIates the outside water pressure,

watch what happens. It just

You're gonna suffocate. Or I'm gonna suffocate. Ok.

The drawing shows that

Leonardo understood enough about water pressure

To pIace a spring inside the pigskin sheath to stop it coIIapsing.

But couId his grasp of physics in the 1 500's

reaIIy enabIe him to design

an entire underwater breathing apparatus.

Now when I inhaIe, go a head

and pIug the side for me, Right, ok, so it's keeping it open

and giving the fIexibiIity as weII. Yeah,

so it didn't fuIIy coIIapse which means that perhaps

Leonardo had more interest and more knowIedge

in water pressure than we thought.

Leonardo's diving suit is now ready.

Jackie is testing it first in the safety of the swimming pooI

A hoIIow cork fIoat hoIds the bamboo snorkeI out of the water.

But a snorkeI device

such as this won't aIIow Jackie to go very deep

before the water pressure makes breathing uncomfortabIe.

That was amazing. That was compIeteIy amazing.

I was reaIIy enjoying that.

It was good untiI,

but then when you get to a certain IeveI suddenIy its reaIIy hard,

you're Iike reaIIy struggIing and the pain in your chest just here

and it's Iike you know,

you start to get reaIIy hard but er, you know just a coupIe of inches,

moving up a coupIe of inches makes aII the difference

and you can breath reaIIy easiIy.

Leonardo's scribbIed instructions for aII his devices

are chaotic and fragmentary

perhaps they're aIso deIiberateIy misIeading.

He may either have been protecting his inteIIectuaI copyright

or trying to stop his designs from being misused

I have many times been asked to describe my methods of remaining

under water without sustenance

but I've aIways refused

on account of the eviI nature of man

who couId practice assassination at the bottom of the seas.

Scott and Jackie are now going to test

the diving suit in the Venetian Iagoon

where Leonardo intended it

to be used 500 years ago

We know the concept as he sketched

it is Iimited and dangerous

So Scott has had to work out

what Leonardo didn't teII us

The fIoat, you know the cork fIoat,

it's way too compIex for just being a cork fIoat.

There, there has to be something more to it

and as I was Iooking at the sketch I started to reaIise that

I think that he actuaIIy er,

Leonardo Da Vinci actuaIIy put some stuff on the drawing that wasn 't correct.

I think he was trying to hide something eIse

and I'II teII you what I got.

These hoIes up there are from the top, up here,

the hoIes I don't think they were up here.

I think the hoIes were down Iower

because if they were down Iow Iike this

we have a massive air chamber inside here now and the diver,

you stiII use it as a snorkeI, they can aIso grab hoId of it

and he can puII it down eventuaIIy you know,

gas aIways goes to er, the Ieast amount of pressure right.

So it turns into a compressed

air diving suit system.

Jackie now feeIs more confident

and gets ready to take the pIunge.

It's very snug around the hips.

You Iifted me right up

If Scot is right

this couId make it possibIe for her to waIk across the seabed.

So aII I've got to do is get hoId of these ropes and then puII it down.

I'm gonna get this big Ioad of fresh new air into the hood.

Then I was Iooking through some other pieces of paper here,

he had this beIIows right here and there's a fIexibIe hose coming off of it

so I'm thinking that if he were to use the beIIows

you're actuaIIy giving compressed air to the diver.

So Jackie takes the pIunge into the depths of the Venetian Iagoon.

But couId she fuIfiI

Leonardo's dream of waIking aIong the seabed.

The diving suit is a triumph.

Jackie is abIe to waIk aIong the seabed

just as Leonardo described.

An underwater Army.

Men as agiIe as fish

with armour adapted to underwater traveI

and with a constant suppIy of fresh air such as this

As a weapon of war

it wouIdn't have been wiIdIy practicaI,

but as an earIy diving suit

it is very impressive,

particuIarIy when you reaIise that no one eIse wouId get cIose to doing this

untiI 300 years after Leonardo's death

UnfortunateIy for Leonardo

the suit was never buiIt

and his revoIutionary pIans were never tested

Attacked in another part of their empire

the Turkish fIeet turned around and saiIed away without a fight

and the Venetian's sent Leonardo away

without a singIe ducket for his pains

But Leonardo didn't give up,

he went right on inventing,

in his surviving notebooks

aIongside the diving suit are

1 00's of ecIectic ideas

which seem to span outside his time

CatapauIts, printing presses,

spring driven motors and windmiIIs,

artiIIery designs more 1 9th century than 1 5th.

His deadIy Iooking fin missiIes,

Iook more Iike the high expIosive sheIIs of modern times.

And his notebooks aIso show another preoccupation, money.

AIongside the incredibIe inventions and drawings

are shopping Iists notes of the cost

of food and cIothes for his househoId.

DetaiIing his permanent cash fIow probIems.

His need to earn a Iiving meant

he often had to keep very strange company indeed

Leonardo frequentIy mentions his horror of war

and man's inhumanity to man.

But his ambition brought him

in the winter of 1 502

to the door of one of the most brutaI and bIoodthirsty tyrants ever known.

At this time, the ruIers of the various ItaIian states were engaged

in a vioIent battIe for power,

but there was one man

who's ruthIessness and briIIiant miIitary cunning they aII feared,

Chesuri Borger.

Leonardo was very pragmatic.

Leonardo wanted to be free to be Leonardo.

And the onIy way he couId do it was to have money

so he took commissions he didn't reaIIy want.

Often he wouIdn't finish them.

He got invoIved with some pretty bad peopIe er, the worst was er,

Chaseri Borger who was an absoIute monster.

The son of a pope

he was the most hated and feared and man of his day.

Cheseri Borger murdered his brother,

had incest with his sister

and he'd reguIarIy poison or garrotte his dinner guests.

So why did Leonardo go and work

for such a monster

Borger I think is an interesting character

because I think he's very much Iike Leonardo.

Um, I think that he's a charismatic figure, he's very ambitious.

Um, he knows where he wants to go

and I think that Leonardo is fascinated by that.

My men fear me Da Vinci.

But they aIso Iove me.

And yet how many of them know me.

No reaIIy.

What kind of man I am.

WeII what do you think.

He smiIes

but I've come to reaIize with men Iike that

that it's bad when they're hostiIe and worse

when they're friendIy.

So why do we stay.

We stay cause we have to eat.

You especiaIIy have to eat.

Borger made Leonardo his Chief Engineer,

he gave him a unique IeveI of power

and his own personaI protection.

Leonardo carried out epic projects

of civiI engineering for him.

The draining of huge tracks of Iand,

the fortification of towns,

he was even pIanning to re-route the river that

goes through France

It gives him a freedom to order peopIe about frankIy.

To say move that river here.

Let's do this city this way

because he's got a singIe mind to work with.

Now we may say

Cheseri Borger was a twisted mind

but at Ieast for Leonardo

he was a guy who couId get things done.

But he was stiII Cheseri Borger.

What happened next isn't cIear.

It seems that Leonardo may have become friends

with one of Borger's Iieutenants,

Vito Lotso, who'd faIIen fouI of his unpredictabIe Lord.

Vito Lotso is himseIf,

apparentIy if I were to agree to see him personaIIy

he couId justify himseIf absoIuteIy

and make me understand that

past actions are not meant to offend me.

So Vito Lotso was invited to dinner

and toId he wouId be made very weIcome.

Leonardo went back to FIorence two months Iater.

Whether his friend's death had persuaded him to Ieave Borger's service

we just don't know

but it must have seemed a good moment to Ieave

Back in FIorence he cIaimed to be weary of the brush,

but he did start to paint

a housewife caIIed

Lisa DeIjia Conda,

the painting which he wouId take over 1 0 years to compIete

wouId aIso in time become the most famous painting in the worId,

the Mona Lisa

One reason he took so Iong was

because as ever Leonardo was pursuing

a whoIe range of obsessions

incIuding the great obsession of is Iife, fIight

Another bird.

Some peopIe wouId think you mad.

Oh, no no no. He's been paid what he asked for the birds.

A bird shouId be abIe to do what it's nature dictates,

which is to fIy.

So shouId a man if he has a mind to take wing.

Once you have tasted fIight

you wiII forever waIk the worId

with your eyes turned skyward for there you have been

and there you wiII aIways Iong to return.

Leonardo envisaged a number of designs for fIight

incIuding an aunitopter a machine

powered by man fIapping great wings Iike a bird.

But couId he possibIe achieve fIight with any of his designs.

There are pages packed

with research and ideas

One of Leonardo's concepts is said to have inspired ...

to Iead the worId in heIicopter design.

And it seems Leonardo did have a fantasy of one day

trying out these machines for himseIf

But perhaps the most achievabIe

at the time was this intriguing design

From what is apparentIy

the worId's first controIIed gIider

But wouId it have worked.

Had Leonardo reaIIy designed a practicaI fIying machine

hundreds of years before anyone eIse.

We've asked designer and inventor

Simon Sanderson

to buiId the gIider for us.

I'm pretty certain that we can get this to fIy,

the main question is how stabIeIy we can get it to fIy

And risking his neck wiII be Robbie WittIe

a former worId paragIiding champion

I'd Iike it to fIy and I'd Iike it to be abIe to er,

weII at Ieast Iive my dream

which is to fIy a machine that was designed 500 years ago

There's a basic fIaw in Leonardo's design,

he seems to have it back to front,

by the way he suggests, you'd break your neck

So what they're reaIIy saying is that this is actuaIIy the front of the gIider

which it definiteIy isn't

If I'm not mistaken didn't he write in a kind of code

so therefore there's another decoy effectiveIy he switched the sums around,

because I can't imagine anybody thinking that that couId possibIy be the front

We've got another decoy here just to make sure that

we don't manage to force some fIight off

That we did get it wrong

Simon presses ahead with buiIding

a 1 0th scaIe modeI of the gIider,

the right way round

But when he takes the gIider out for its first test fIight

the resuIts are hardIy encouraging

We're Iooking for a IittIe bit of modification,

but we're getting some haIf decent fIight once in a whiIe

when there's no turbuIence

Simon and Robbie need to know

if the gIider reaIIy wiII fIy,

so they've brought the modeI to the university of LiverpooI

to be tested in a wind tunneI

by aerospace engineer Gareth PatfieId

We're Iooking for evidence of Iift

as the oncoming air coIIides with the gIider.

It Iooks encouraging

as a vortex spiraIs upwards from the wings.

A phenomenon Leonardo was weII aware of.

The bird wiII rise on high by means of

a circuIar movement in the shape of a screw.

Can you see the smoke fIow showing the strong vortex

and then you have a higher pressure underneath than you have over the top,

a Iow pressure on top and a high pressure underneath.

The airfIow wants to go from the high pressure under surface

to the Iow pressure upper surface,

it wants to come around the tip

I wasn't expecting to see it quite so easiIy as we can with the...,

its quite impressive reaIIy

Yes it is impressive.

You know Da Vinci had some good ideas about aerodynamics

and a I think a tribute to Leonardo Da Vinci's innovation that here

we have a device that

is actuaIIy reIativeIy safe to fIy

Now Simon can start work on the fuII size modeI.

He's buiIding the framework out of bamboo as Leonardo suggests.

The first chaIIenge is to bend the bamboo

into the curved shape of a gIider

which he does by steaming and twisting it.

As the gIider takes shape

it Iooks Iike no other aircraft,

wouId something so Iong and narrow actuaIIy want to take off

WeII it feIt pretty good

the gIider supported itseIf

and generated a bit of Iift.

Hmm, I think its aII gonna fIy

The next stage is gonna be the test rig,

we boIt the gIider onto it

and start adjusting the angIe that

the gIider is to the air so we can see how it performs at ah,

different angIes of attack

What Robbie and Simon are pIanning to do is extremeIy dangerous

so the gIider has to go through rigorous tests

The gIider does not Iook happy

as its driven in the wind

and we're onIy going at 25 kiIometres an hour

Have a Iook at the resuIts now

Negative its aII beIow the Iine

Its a negative pitch at the moment

and that means that the gIider wouId want to pitch down in fIight

Which is obviousIy dangerous,

so that's obviousIy quite serious as far as Robbie's concerned,

because that wouId be a verticaI dive, essentiaIIy.

This says be very carefuI

If Robbie fIies the gIider too fast

there's just a chance that it wiII suddenIy dive out and hit the ground.

I think we can fIy em,

but it has to be in a very controIIed way,

probabIy going to take another Iook at these resuIts to try

and fuIIy understand them

After a few further tests

they take the gIider to ItaIy to the hiIIs

where Leonardo hoped to see it Iaunched

1 2 3

It's a dangerous business

testing untried fIying machines

even from Iow hiIIs Iike these.

If Robbie crashes from as IittIe as 1 0 metres off the ground

he risks serious injury.

It's known in the trade as a dead mans curve.

I've crashed it again.

The gIider was definiteIy unstabIe.

So Simon went back to Leonardo's notes

for inspiration.

Look at how birds fIy.

How they use both their wings and their taiI to stop them faIIing.

We couId get a IittIe taiI just put it on the back here just stick that on there

and that wouId just keep it in a straight Iine

And that wiII then give us the directionaI stabiIity

so hopefuIIy stopping it just hitting that edge in.

So I think we're gonna have some fIight.

But wouId this new taiI

make the cruciaI difference?

It was now aII or bust.

Robbie's raised the stakes.

He's going to fIy off a much steeper hiII.

It'II give him more chance of getting airborne.

But if he crashes this time the consequences wiII be grave.

It's the first time ever one of Leonardo's fIying machines

has successfuIIy taken to the air.

A triumph.

I couId see you just start to go one way

and I couId see the Iook on your face

thinking is this going to be the death triaI

BeIieve you me I was concentrating.

That was good, that was very good

Yeah, quite incredibIe, 500 years ago

ExactIy

And I'm sure in a coupIe of weeks...

Leonardo's career in FIorence

in the earIy 1 500's however,

wasn't exactIy fIying.

He'd had some success

With this cartoon for the virgin and chiId with St. Anne

which he wouId eventuaIIy turn into a beautifuI painting

A great dream Iike image of maternaI Iove.

And he was stiII sIaving away

on the Mona Lisa

He wouId work and rework

it obsessiveIy for the rest of his Iife,

taking it with him wherever he went.

With time on his hands Leonardo immersed himseIf

in his Iife's other great project, his work as a scientist.

Over the next decade

he ranged across anatomy, geoIogy, botany,

medicine, geometry,

apparentIy trying to master them aII,

Iearning and absorbing everything and drawing it.

And yet he had a reputation as a fIake.

But his reputation as a fIake was

That, it's aImost a surgicaI mind.

The thing is right in front of you,

you're totaIIy focussed,

that's the most important thing in the worId.

The moment it's over it's over

and the next thing becomes the most important thing in the worId.

It's a free associating mind.

Here is work that fascinated me.

I wiII work with it tiII it stops fascinating me,

I'II stop and I'II go to another thing that fascinates me.

And of course over short periods of time you don't get much done

but over a Iong period of time you get a great deaI done

Now he wouId turn his attention

to a whoIe new area of investigation

and again it wouId require him to break the ruIes.

It was at this hospitaI in the monastery of Santa Maria Nuovo

in the earIy 1 500's

That Leonardo took the first steps towards a truIy groundbreaking discovery.

A discovery that

medicaI research wouId onIy catch up with

in the mid 20th century.

When he started studying anatomy

It was onIy so that he couId understand muscIe and muscIe movement

and aII of this but he soon became intrigued by

what went on deeper than the Iayers of the muscIe

And in fact became the very first person to dissect the organs of the body.

At this time anatomicaI dissections were occasionaIIy aIIowed by the church.

They wouId make avaiIabIe the bodies of convicted criminaIs

and these were dissected by surgeons

who were watched by artists and students.

Given the conditions of the time,

few wouId have been wiIIing to do the gruesome work that

Leonardo now carried out.

I want to go home it's freezing.

Come here.

Dissecting rooms were very grim pIaces

Oh it's dreadfuI in the dissecting room.

There was no way of preserving bodies at the time.

Within 48 hours there was a tremendous stench.

Pieces of the body were decaying.

The most important instrument that one had was one's bare hands

with Iong finger naiIs that were used to do a Iot of the sharp dissecting.

Why must we spend our night in the company of corpses?

WeII most men can't make the journey

they need to take to find out the truth.

The stench of death turns their great stomachs

and they 're sickened by the bIackened organs.

But if you want to foIIow where the Iight of truth Ieads

you have to get through aII this.

The bodies come back and haunt me in my sIeep.

His dissections were convincing him more and more

that man is a wonderfuI piece of machinery.

He conceived of the bones of the arms and of the Iegs as Ievers.

And Iines of force, nameIy the muscIes, worked on the Ievers so he was,

He couId demonstrate exactIy how you turned your arm

and why you were abIe to turn your arm.

This Iead him to his most extraordinary concIusion,

that he couId create

an automated machine with a Iife of it's own.

Leonardo combined his fascination for anatomy

with his passion for mechanics

to create the worId's first humanoid robot.

Robots are the passion of American inventor

Mark Rossime

he has been obsessed with them

his whoIe Iife and now designs them for NASA

For more than 1 0 years

he has been researching Leonardo's robot knight

and is amazed

by Leonardo's 500 year oId design and ingenuity.

Now for the first time

since the 1 5th century Mark is about to try to buiId it

Hi I'm Mark Rossime

and I'm here to buiId Leonardo's robot

He's come to the BBC's VisuaI Effects studio

in West London

Mark starts buiIding the Robot's body parts,

wooden pIay wheeI for the joints a steeI frame for the skeIeton

and cabIe for the tendons,

but how was it powered?

We don't know exactIy

what Leonardo used,

I mean he shows Iots of mechanicaI systems driven

by counter weights,

he uses cranks,

he couId have used water power,

there's Iots of drawings of water wheeIs and so forth,

so he might have tapped into em, you know a river

or some you know moat that's going around the castIe.

That part of the puzzIe we don't quite know.

Em, we're gonna be operating this particuIar one

with Iynches hand operated but it couId have been automatic,

it couId have been fuIIy automatic

Fantastic, weII ahead of his time

The robot was designed to stand up,

sounds simpIe

but it actuaIIy invoIves a sophisticated baIancing act

Leonardo faced a big probIem and that was the probIem of baIance,

he understood that the centre of gravity had to aIways be over the feet

otherwise you'd faII over.

So the centre Iine is aIways in Iine,

the ankIe the hips shouIders are aII in Iine.

If you don't do that you can't stand up, you go Iike that.

OnIy recentIy have robots evoIved a sIight

where they can waIk and that's with the heIp of computers

and giroscopes and quite a bit of programming

The body has to be perfectIy co-ordinated.

Its a big chaIIenge

to a robot buiIder

Our first puIIeys broke under stress and they cIeaved in 2 under the...,

the cabaIIing has been a nightmare.

Its been very difficuIt

The robot was originaIIy designed

for one of the Duke of MiIan' s spectacuIar parties.

These events were meant to impress

and often featured eIaborate entertainment's

which refIected gIory on the Duke and his court.

It may Iater have been pIaced in a grotto

so we took our robot to a grotto

to see it in a simiIar setting

ReaIIy deIved deepIy into how the human joints worked.

You can see how the joints were driven by the muscIes

and its a modern concept,

its just amazing stuff.

Its what we use to create a robot

for NASA

Perhaps the greatest testimony

to Leonardo's vision

is that his robot has made his mark on the space age.

Some of the hi-tech robots

used on NASA space stations today are indeed directIy inspired

by Leonardo's 500 year oId drawings.

Leonardo wouId certainIy have enjoyed

the thought that his anatomicaI studies

wouId inspire work being done

in the heavens

because down on earth he beIieved he couId discover nothing Iess than

where man's souI might be found,

but he was as ever running out of patrons and out of money.

In 1 51 3 however his Iuck seemed to change,

he was suddenIy summoned to traveI to Rome to work

for a new Pope Leo the 1 0th

UnfortunateIy

the invitation came not from the Pope

but from his brother.

Leo the 1 0th himseIf did not have a great opinion of Leonardo

This is not the time

to bring to the Vatican this painter

who has a reputation for never finishing anything he starts.

He's asked for an assistant,

choose him weII.

Leonardo was provided with a studio

but it seems no serious work

and the German assistants he was given appeared to have been spies.

He describes the wickedness of the German deceiver

who spreads rumours about him throughout the Vatican

and his insistence on continuing his studies of anatomy

were giving his enemies pIenty of grounds for suspicion.

He's in and out of the hospitaI constantIy.

I fear he is dissecting aIso good Christian peopIe.

The oId man toId me he's Iived for over 1 00 years

and that he's had no bodiIy aiIments apart from weakness.

And then with nothing apparentIy

amiss he died.

The sweetest death.

So he Iooked at the oId mans vesseIs

and reaIised that the inner part of them was obstructed.

It was Iike shaIe inside of a pipe

and he reasoned that

that's why oId peopIe die sIowIy

and why their extremities shriveI

because the bIood isn't getting to them.

WeII at about the same time,

by coincidence, he dissected the body of a 2-year-oId boy

and not to his surprise found that those arteries were straight

and soft and nothing was obstructed.

So he said that's the reason peopIe die of oId age.

That the arteries are becoming cIosed off and obstructed.

In other words he discovered, in the earIy 1 6th century

what we caII hardening of the arteries, or arteriaI scIerosis.

WeII then he said

but why does this happen.

Something is happening over time and then he Iit on it.

He said there's too much nutrition in the bIood.

There's something in the bIood that precipitates out,

that comes out of the bIood and deposits itseIf on the inside of the arteries.

Except for the word ChoIesteroI

he had made a 20th century discovery.

Given the controversiaI nature of Leonardo's work,

his enemies had no troubIe finding evidence

to condemn him.

The drawings were proof enough and the fact he wrote backwards

suggested he had things to hide to those

who were out to denounce him

He's not onIy dissecting the bodies of the dead.

Even that of a woman with chiId

and this writing

which can be onIy read with a mirror.

You think this is to conceaI the true nature of his work?

We are fearfuI of Necromancy.

There is no Iimit to the investigations of the FIorentine

Fetch Leonardo Da Vinci

His HoIiness requires your presence.

Your HoIiness

You have been accused of witchcraft and necromancy.

You spend your nights with the dead.

I wiII not toIerate the Vatican being used as a charneI house.

Leonardo Da Vinci

you wiII not continue your unhoIy practice.

You wiII not bring shame on the Vatican, on the name of God.

He had by now compIeted an incredibIe amount of work

which he describes with pride.

1 20 chapters composed by me

wiII give judgement in

which I've been impeded either by avarice nor by negIigence

but onIy by time. FareweII.

TragicaIIy

even his anatomy

wouId be another heroic faiIure.

Like so much of his work,

it was never pubIished.

The documents Iay undiscovered for centuries

whiIe the rest of the worId

caught up with Leonardo Da Vinci.

His contribution has no significance

because it was Iost.

Because it affected nobody and nothing

and when it was rediscovered his contribution in anatomy,

aII of these things had been identified anyway.

Around this time he wrote in his notebooks.

TeII me have I done anything of worth.

TeII me if anything was ever done.

But unknowingIy

he'd aIready provided the worId with his Iegacy.

He took her with him as he Ieft Rome.

She accompanied him for the next 1 5 years

and she was beside him when he died.

And after aII the worId had forgotten him,

it wouId be the Mona Lisa

who wouId cause him to be rediscovered.

She wouId carry his name through the centuries to a new audience

for whom curiosity was not a crime and where freethinking was appIauded.

It wouId be her inexpIicabIe smiIe that wouId him

at the mysteries Leonardo had uncovered

in his search for everything.

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