Leonardo's Machines: Da Vinci's Inventions Revealed,   ISBN:9780715324448

Customer Rating: 

GET THIS BOOK. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT. THERE IS SO MUCH TO READ ABOUT DAVINCI'S TALENTS AND INNOVATIONS AND SO MANY DRAWINGS THAT ARE JUST SO TANTILIZING TO CONSIDER. THIS IS ONE BOOK I WON'T PART WITH!

Customer Rating: 

Excellent computer graphics illustrating Leonardo's work. -- As well as the story of the author, who goes through his quest to put together his masterpiece. - A few more intimate details of Leonardo's life would make to totally magical. Domenico Laurenze is more concerned with his researching the last books of Leonardo and how he found them. -- Seemed like a Indiana Jones adventure rather than an adoration of my personal god, Leonardo Di Vinci. -- But the 100s of reproductions of his Leonardo's original drawings made this book unforgetable.

Customer Rating: 

Facinating book with gorgeous drawings. We bought it for our 8 year old son who has always loved inventing and drawing machines of his own creation and were so impressed with it that we bought a copy to donate to his school library too.

Customer Rating: 

I bought this book because I have tickets to see the traveling exhibit, "The Da Vinci Experience", in a couple months. It is a gorgeous book. Each machine covered has copies of the Da Vinci original plans, plus the editor's illustrations breaking the machine into it's components, with the placements of said componenets. Each machine has explanations of how components and the full machine work (or are supposed to work). Also, each machine has a history of Leonardo's drawings, purpose, client or personal notebooks, etc. It's a great book and looks gorgeous. I wouldn't think it would be a how-to for a school project unless the kid/parent had a lot of mechanical experience beforehand. All drawings show "real" components that you'd need a full shop to put together. There are no measurements, per se, just comparative sizes shown in the drawings. In the case of Leonardo's original drawings, it looks like this was deliberate. For example, the book's Introduction tells of Leonardo's problems with Giorgio Tedesco, an assistant of a prominant Medici. He wanted Leonardo to build him wooden models of several inventions. Leonardo successfully argued that he could only give Tedesco the scaled drawings. Historians surmise that Leonardo suspected that Tedesco would take the models back to his country, and take them apart to make full-sized machines out of iron without Leonardo's help. Job security was no laughing matter in the 1500's! Love the book. Can't wait to see the working full-sized (except for the half-size helicopter)models made from the drawings in the exhibition.

Customer Rating: 

excellent illustrations. this book is a must for anybody contemplating building any of Leonardo's machines. Particularly for school projects. Disappointed that the crossbow wasn't included. Otherwise probably one of the best books available on his machines.