MAKING LEONARDO’S FLYING MACHINES

Just about every book on the history of airplanes has a sketch or two by Leonardo da Vinci. There might be the sketch of the helicopter, or the parachute, or one of the drawings of the ornithopters. More often than not, there are several sketches. But when you read the text, it almost always says, “But they did not fly.”

Didn’t they?

Are we sure?

Leonardo left behind thousands of pages of notes and drawings, including many sketches of flying machines. Some are just doodles, but others are detailed schematic diagrams that look almost ready for the carpenter. In fact, many look so finished that it is tempting to think they are drawings of machines he had already completed.

Nowhere in those thousands of pages does he report actually getting aboard one and flying. But, just because there is no record, that doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.

When I look at his drawings I can’t help thinking that many of them were actually built and tested, if only as models. And as soon as that thought pops into my head, my “inner Leonardo” begins to wonder how I could build and fly them. And as soon as that happens, I reach for paper and scissors!

Leonardo put his thoughts into pictures…

…and I’ve turned those pictures into flying models.

One great thing about paper airplanes is that you can quickly build a prototype of anything you can imagine, and test it without worrying about getting hurt if it crashes. So it was an easy step for me to go from looking at Leonardo’s sketches to actually building and flying paper models. In fact, I’ve been building them for a long time. Some of the models in this kit date back almost two decades! But because I only had Leonardo’s drawings to work with, I had to imagine what he was thinking when he drew them. How did they move? What were they made of? Where would they balance, and would the wings and tail be big enough? Soon, I began to understand the way Leonardo thought, and sometimes I almost felt I was becoming Leonardo.

The planes in this set are ready to assemble and enjoy. I can promise you that these models really do fly. The hard part—the pondering and examining and interpreting and testing—has been done already by Leonardo and I, so all you need to do is put them together and take them to the park! But I think you’ll find, as you build and then fly these models, that you’ll start to feel like you’re becoming Leonardo too. You’ll feel like a Leonardo who is watching his designs take to the air, an ecstatic Leonardo jumping up and down with excitement, a Leonardo who has, at last, learned how to fly!