Unfortunate though it may be for the dreamers of the world, we’re all judged not by what we imagine, but what we actually do. This goes double for those specifically tasked with creating things in the physical environment, from engineers and architects to inventors and artists. Leonardo da Vinci, the original “Renaissance man,” was an engineer, architect, inventor, artist, and more besides, and five centuries after his death we continue to admire him for not just the works of art and technology he realized during his lifetime, but also the ones that never made it off his drawing board (or out of his notebooks). And as we continue to discover, many of the latter weren’t just flights of fancy, but genuine innovations grounded in reality.
Take the bridge Leonardo proposed to Sultan Bayezid II, who in 1502 had “sent out the Renaissance equivalent of a government RFP Continue reading »