Elenco Submarine - Manual (Page 9)

7
The idea of a shell which sailed under water had already been thought of by previous
engineers, such as Taccola and Francesco di Giorgio. Da Vinci was certainly inspired
by his colleagues, but he developed the idea, putting more serious thought into
whether or not it was feasible. The weapons that Da Vinci wanted to put inside the
submarine are described in Manuscript B and in other pages of the Codex Atlanticus.
They refer to screws and mechanical springs capable of drilling into the planking of
enemy ships and disembowelling them.
Until studies carried out by Leonardo3 in 2011, the submarine had never been
reconstructed because the drawings and notes were never considered clear or
complete. There is a very damaged and moulding sheet, folio 188r of the Codex
Atlanticus, from which almost all the drawings have disappeared. A few items such
as a fin, oars and other strange mechanisms are just recognisable. The sheet is blue
and with the passage of time the ink has become almost invisible. Using digital
processing it was possible to bring the hidden drawings back to life; around 40
different items and some writing was uncovered in this way.
There isn’t a completed project, but a series of indications and mechanisms which,
when put together, bring to light one of Da Vinci’s most deadly secret projects: the
Mechanical Submarine. All of the drawings uncovered on folio 881r are underwater
mechanisms and experiments. Da Vinci himself said that because it was a lethal
weapon it must not fall into enemy hands, and this may be another reason why,
instead of drawing the final project, he drew it disassembled and in a way that makes
it difficult to understand. After studying the drawings at length and analysing the
other drawings throughout all the codices, it was possible to reconstruct in the
Leonardo3 laboratories, first in 3D and then physically, the real Leonardo Da Vinci
Submarine for the first time.