Gizmodo: leonardo da vinci

Da Vinci's Mechanical Lion Brought To Life After 500 Years

Sean Fallon — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:40:00 EDT

Thanks to written eyewitness accounts and mechanical drawings left behind by the artist, Leonardo da Vinci's fabled mechanical lion walks again after 500 years.

Originally designed to entertain the King of France, the robot has been recreated as part of an exhibit at the Chateau du Clos Luce in France—Leonardo's last residence.

Using those drawings as well as the written descriptions of the lion, master maker of automatons Renato Boaretto recreated the animal for the Chateau du Clos Luce, where it can be seen as part of a Da Vinci exhibition that lasts until January 31, 2010.

Boaretto's lion, which is life-size, is wound up by hand like an old-fashioned clock. Then, it takes about 10 steps forward, shakes its head from side to side, opens and closes its jaws and wags its tail up and down.

A secret mechanism is built into its mane so that when a particular spot is stroked, a trapdoor swings open on the lion's flank and several fleur de lys pop out.

Described in the Reuters article as "the George Lucas of his time" Leonardo was famed for winning over crowds with mechanical "special effects" (although, there is no evidence to suggest that he tinkered too much with his past successes and ended up disappointing his fans). [Reuters]

Sit On the Mona Lisa's Face

Sean Fallon — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:20:00 EST

A brilliant concept—chairs that can be transformed into wall art to save space. Plus, it's a turn on to anyone who ever fantasized about 16th hottie Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo. [Treehugger]

The iPhone as Designed By Leonardo da Vinci

Jesus Diaz — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:40:00 EST

This is one of the coolest iPhone t-shirts I've ever seen—apart from ours: The iPhone as designed by Leonardo da Vinci or some cuckoo Victorian scientist. They have a pretty-pretty hand screen-printed poster too:

The t-shirt—which is a completely different take on the pure technical version—could be yours for $20, and the poster for $10. [iSteamphone]

sdrawkcaB emiT slleT hctaW icniV ad odranoeL

Andi Wang — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:40:13 EST

Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's backwards writing, this gadget plays with the idea of what the Renaissance Man's watch may have looked like, if watches existed back then. The numbers on the faceplate are not just written—and listed—backwards, but the hour and minute hands move counter-clockwise as well. For $36, this watch simply tells time backwards, and will not, in fact, act as a time machine and take you back to the future. [Fashionably Geek]

MythBusters Build a 1100-Barrel Paintball Gun to Paint the Mona Lisa, Instantly

John Herrman — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:20:00 EDT

In a presentation made at Nvidia's NVISION show this week, Adam and Jamie unveiled a 1100 barrel paintball gun and—in an instant—painted a pretty convincing (if slightly drippy) Mona Lisa. In typical MythBusters fashion, the incredibly elaborate experiment was only tenuously linked to their hypothesis. The presentation was intended to represent the difference in operation between single and multicore processors, referring to current gen CPUs versus GPUs, respectively.

Of course, the reality of parallel computing is much more complex than the MythBusters are making it seem here, but as with many of the experiments on their TV show, the sheer ridiculousness of this demonstration makes its questionable veracity completely, totally, seriously excusable. Now that they've built this thing, the MythBusters have a clear and undeniable responsibility to turn it on a human and put the results on TV. Thanks in advance, guys. [TGDaily via CrunchGear]