Automobile 1480

This drawing of an automobile was made by Leonardo da Vinci, in Milan, Italy, using pen and ink on paper. Though we now associate the automobile with mass production, consider how radically different its invention was. Da Vinci was thinking through the problem of self-propulsion, which would have required a masterful combination of design and craft. You can see he was imagining a clockwork mechanism, a network of gears and levers. Of course, he was also thinking in terms of the material, imagining the properties of wood and metal. The weight, strength, and responsiveness of these materials were key to his conception. The drawing itself shows the ingenuity required to translate these physical properties into an idea. It is a fascinating insight into the material imagination of an artist. This example challenges our contemporary expectations of design and craft.