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Science Technology

Da Vinci's Purposeful Mistakes 93

Posted by timothy from the like-the-cheesegrater-parachute dept.
puppetman writes "According to a story out today, Leonardo Da Vinci deliberately introduced mistakes in his inventions. The series, Leonardo, produced by the BBC, claims that simple mistakes were introduced; mistakes that would not become apparent until after the contraption was built. The series hypothesizes that this was either a form of patent protection, or a way of ensuring his work did not end up being used for military purposes (Da Vinci was a gay, vegetarian pacifist)."
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Da Vinci's Purposeful Mistakes More

Da Vinci's Purposeful Mistakes

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  • Da Vinci the programmer (Score:5, Funny)

    by thinkliberty ( 593776 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @05:51PM (#4866557)
    Da Vinci would have made a great programmer. Just look at his beard!
    • maybe not a programmer, but definatly a UNIX or Linux guru, his beard is better then stallman's and Alan Cox's put together!
      • I wonder if he would stink as bad as stallman. My department at NEU.edu had him come onto campus, in 2001. As he walked into the building, he had an old flea market smell.... blah! He even forgot comb his head.

        Thinking about it... Back in the day of Da Vinci, showers were not an everyday thing... but again he was gay (usually are very clean).. so we may never know.
        • I wonder if he would stink as bad as stallman.


          NOTHING stanks like RMS. I ran into him again at COMDEX and you could smell his nasty a$$ two aisles over.

          AFAIK, there is nothing in the GLP or LGPL prohibiting the use of SOAP. Somebody needs to clue him in on this little fact.

    • Re:Da Vinci the programmer (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      DaVinci would have made a great gay vegetarian pacifist! Just look at the beard!

      Uhh... wait a minute...

  • this is still done... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kasper37 ( 90457 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @05:52PM (#4866562) Homepage
    hackers many time release slightly broken code when it comes to exploits so that if someone wants to actually compile the code they will have to have some knowledge of programming.

  • Ah! I get it now! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alethes ( 533985 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @05:55PM (#4866592)
    That explains why Microsoft puts all those bugs in their software. To protect their intellectual property and prevent their software from being used for military implementations.

    Oh wait... it didn't work [wired.com].
    • Oh, I don't know, I think it worked pretty well. I mean, they can't actually stop the military from putting Windows on their computers; they can only make it a Really Bad Idea to do so, at least for anything critical or anything that has to be secure. And in that, they would appear to have succeeded.

  • A lot to learn from Leonardo (Score:5, Funny)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @05:56PM (#4866600) Journal
    I think many programmers have a lot to learn from this tale. We now have two useful phrases:

    "It's not a bug, it's a feature."
    "It's there to protect my intellectual property and keep my program from being exploited by the military."

  • Thanks for the insight. (Score:5, Funny)

    by moonboy ( 2512 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @05:57PM (#4866613)


    The fact that Da Vinci was a "...gay, vegetarian..." really helps drive home the point that he was a pacifist. Thanks for the wonderful insight.

    • I don't think I've met a vegetarian that wasn't a pacifist, so maybe all he needed to say was gay vegetarian. And NO, I'M NOT going to make a joke about gays eating meat.
      • I don't think I've met a vegetarian that wasn't a pacifist

        Hitler died enough years ago that there's not much chance many of us could have met him.
      • I don't think I've met a vegetarian that wasn't a pacifist,

        Try stealing their tofu and see how long they keep being Mr Nice Vege:-).

        Both the US and British Armies have in the not too distant past introduced vegetarian combat/emergency meals, which would seem to indicate there are vegetarins in botha rmies who were fed up of having to eat meat or starve when in the field.

      • Plenty of vegetarians there. So you'd have a better chance of finding a vegetarian who isn't a pacifist.

        For a start you could check among the militant Hindu types - a few might actually be vegetarian. That could save some time.

    • Vegetarians vs pacifists (Score:5, Informative)

      by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdot AT stefanco DOT com> on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:30PM (#4866976) Homepage Journal
      And not all pacificts are vegetarian, and being vegetarian (or gay) doesn't make you more of a pacifist.

      Da Vinci designed a tank, an assault chariot armed with whirling scythes, and numerous pieces of Artillery [umd.edu]. Not very pacifist.

      Adolph Hitler sometimes considered himself to be a vegetarian [micahbooks.com], (A loose definition by today's standards: He ate some pork and fowl, but also ate alot of vegetables, spoke of the benefits of vegetarianism. Pretty radical in those days in Germany, the Pork Capital), and did not consider himself a pacifist.

      This certainly supports the point that not all pacifists are vegetarian.
      • ..being vegetarian (or gay) doesn't make you more of a pacifist.

        Actually, I have an interesting experience with this. While I am neither gay nor pacifist, I was surprised to find after becoming vegetarian, that I experienced a signifigant decrease in agressive emotions and an increased sympathy for pacifist attitudes.

        I think claiming a direct relationship between vegetarianism and pacifism is certainly a stretch, but it seems valid to claim that being vegetarian does indicate a tendency towards pacifism.

        From my own experience, I would definitly say that being vegetarian does make me more of a pacifist.

      • True, vegetarians don't have to be pacificsts. Have you seen that bumper sticker?

        'I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, it's because I hate plants.'
      • Some famous vegetarians
        Charles Manson
        Adolph Hitler (primarily a veg, but not totally)
        David Koresh
        the Kikuyu tribe in Kenya (gave us the Mau Mau massacre)
        Jeffrey Dalmer (when he wasn't eating people)

        and the Spice Girls

        Clearly some very disturbed people in this group
    • Actually it does. Remember the military does not tolerate gays. He is the poster child for right wing hate. He is what modern right wingers would call 'a damn tree-hugging hippie!'

      Who had the last laugh?
      • Actually, judging from the amount of wood and leather needed for some of his inventions, I doubt that he cared more about a rabbit than his fellow man. So I can't call him a treehugger.

        And, as noted in posts by others, he volunteered his work for military application, so I believe he supported soldiers fighting for him. As such, he is clearly not a hippie.

        However, while I can find plenty of refrences to Da Vinci painting female nudes, a quick search on google for "Da Vinci sex exploits" is quite dissapointing. So obviously he is gay:-)

        --Cam
        Onna those modern Right-wing, gun-toting, baby-killing Army types.

      • There's actually no GWB Sr. Dubya's dad is George Herbert Walker Bush, so it'd be GHWB.
        Lot's of excellent insight into him and the Bush dynasty is available in an on-line unauthorized biography, available here. [tarpley.net]

    • The fact that Da Vinci was a "...gay, vegetarian..." really helps drive home the point that he was a pacifist. Thanks for the wonderful insight.

      I assume you're being sarcastic here. Yeah, I had to chuckle when I read the post too. Being gay or vegetarian really has nothing to do with being a pacifist. It's just to poster slipping his personal stereotypes into a slashdot article. People become vegetarian for a variety of reasons, mostly independent of whether they agree with whether wars are a necessary part of humanity or not. As for being gay, well, I'd like to see some stats that prove that gays are more likely to be pacifists than heteros. You'd think that with all the hub-bub about Trent Lott these days that people would be a bit more careful to let slips of the tongue (or keys, in this matter) say more than they really should but, oh well...

      GMD

    • Re:Thanks for the insight. (Score:5, Informative)

      by aminorex ( 141494 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @09:28PM (#4867897) Homepage Journal
      It is highly doubtful that he was a homosexual. What is known is that he was anonymously charged with being a homosexual once, and acquitted of the charge. See this link [lairweb.org.nz].

      The degree of his pacifism is also quite suspect:

      1482 saw him writing to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza listing his capabilities as a designer of both civil and military machines. Italy was being afflicted by wars between the various city-states; this was followed by a French invasion. This was a time of rapid development of firearms and explosives and military engineers were important figures. Leonardo's had many ideas for fortifications, bridges, weapons, and river diversions to flood the enemy.

      The article's author is certaintly quite correct, however, that he was a vegetarian [lairweb.org.nz].

      • Re:Thanks for the insight. (Score:4, Funny)

        by McCarrum ( 446375 ) <mark.limburg@g m a i l . com> on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @09:42PM (#4867995)
        Thank you ... I was going to write this up, but you beat me to it :) Leonardo was accused to being gay very early in his life, as it was one of the most effective (and highly used) political tools of the time. Bloody Inquisition!

        Oh, and stop the three thousand replies due to occur ... Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
      • It is highly doubtful that he was a homosexual. What is known is that he was anonymously charged with being a homosexual once, and acquitted of the charge.

        Homosexual or not, he really seemed to prefer the male body to the female - all his female figures are, to quote an arty friend of mine, "teenage boys with a pair of tits slapped on". No curves at all (except for the aforementioned tits).
        Or was that Michelangelo?

        Hell, who cares anyway - sexual preference notwithstanding, Da Vinci had enough other eccentricities and cool attributes to make him a Geek archetype...

        • Re:Thanks for the insight. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by deepvoid ( 175028 ) on Thursday December 12, 2002 @01:12AM (#4868703) Journal
          Actually artists of the time who were of "respectable" status did not take in young ladies and ask them nicely to take off thier clothes if they ever wanted to get another commision from the church. The artistic schools of the age would often perform the indicated anatomical substitutions once the carefully chaperoned sittings were complete.

          Artists who broke this rule were isolated by the church. There were some exceptions, but as a rule, models were as male as the actors of the day.

          If he had been a little less inquisitive and a little more compliant he might have ended up as a Jesuit monk, but was considered unsuitable for the holy vocation, somthing which colored his attitude for the rest of his life.

          His disdain for sex is more likely due to his devotion to his own mother who was a simple barmaid who could neither read nor write. Her simplicity, yet country horse sense, educated him in compliment to the formal education he recieved from his father's family.

          Da Vinci had two qualities which when coupled with his lack of want, produced a great man. Curiosity, and ingenuity.
          • That's a perspective I hadn't considered, and would quite nicely explain the aforementioned anatomical improbabilities. Although I do recall a (probably apocryphal) story that old Leo thought the male body to be much more aesthetically pleasing, but I've no proof to back that up.
            I think you're on slightly shakier ground with the Freudian analysis of the mother thing, though. (=
        • Yes, I believe you're thinking of Michaelangelo. I just visited Italy this summer and all of M.'s women are as you described. Muscular with breasts as an afterthought.
      • I was about to state all this, when I saw your finely crafted response (good job). Then I did some research [mos.org]

        Like any rational human, Leonardo abhorred war -- he called it "beastly madness" -- but since Renaissance Italy was constantly at war he couldn't avoid it. He designed numerous weapons, including missiles, multi-barreled machine guns, grenades, mortars, and even a modern-style tank. He drew the line, however, with his plans for an underwater breathing device, which he refused to reveal, saying that men would likely use it for "evil in war."

        So perhaps one could say he's a realist.

      • I don't think that legal rulings from that time have a lot to do with reality.

        I'm not saying he was or wasn't gay, but consider two modern rulings: (1) OJ Simpson is innocent; (2) Liberace, at one point, convinced a British court he was not gay.

      • your evidence is buried in a lot of text and i happen to know of another site that has a brief write up on the accusation [kausal.com]:

        A remarkable event happened on 8. April 1476. At this time it was usual to put anonymous accusations in a wooden box (called tamburo), which was put up in front of the Palazzo Vecchio

        On 8. April Leonardo and four others were accused. The anonymous person accused Leonardo to have a homosexual affair with Jacopo Saltarelli, who was a model. The procedure ended for all participants with an acquittal of the charge. This story is an indication of the supposed homosexuality of Leonardo da Vinci.
    • No such thing, all the gay people I know Take Meat! :>

  • Da Vinci was paranoid (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hubert_Shrump ( 256081 ) <[cobranet] [at] [gmail.com]> on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:00PM (#4866627) Journal
    IIRC, he also wrote in boustrophedon [google.com], and in italian, which is just crazy paranoid.

    It'd be like double encrypting your entire HDD because you're the world's finest pornographer.

    I should know, I'm a medical doctor.

    • and in italian, which is just crazy paranoid.

      That brings up an interesting point which so few Americans often recognize.

      At a recent job site, there was a bookcase in the break room with one of those illustrated history books on 'The Renassiance.' I spent some lunch periods browsing through the book. Shockingly, it was almost all about the Renaissance that happened in Italy.

      What happened to all the people running around squawking in mock British accents in costumes? Wasn't that part of history too?

      Well, it turns out that the Renaissance happened mostly on the continent, in Italy. The English had the Elizabethan stuff, but certainly little of the high culture of the Renaissance.

      It would kinda dampen the spirit of all the SCA people carrying on in mock garb at the Ren-Fests if they had to learn Italian, though, so we'll continue pretending, sorta like a Monty Python version of history.
    • You bastard!

      There as I happy in my ignorance now I'm just going to have learn boustrophedon. The speed increase even in the examples was quite staggering.

      I'd keep the MD bit quite, nobody likes a show off :-) Trust me I'm a doctor doesn't work.
    • boustrophedon is pretty cool, but it really needs a 'q' in the name.

      P.S.
      I intentionally declined to capitialize the first word of that sentence for a reason.

      -
    • IIRC, he also wrote in boustrophedon, and in italian, which is just crazy paranoid.

      WYRI (well you recall incorrectly)--

      He didn't write in boustrophedon, he wrote backwards, so it could be read in a mirror. Boustrophedon goes alternately right->left then left->right, like the ox ploughing the field that the root of the word suggests.

      Funny that he should write in Italian, considering it was his native language.

      I should know, I'm a medical doctor.

      Remind me never to visit you when I'm ill--god knows what you'll "recall" my symptoms to be indicative of.

  • Even geniuses mess up.

    And if they were intentional bugs, why not introduce more subtle, complex ones? Simple flaws are more likely to be found by engineers reading over his plans.

    http://josephgrossberg.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]
    • Well, because in Da Vinci's day, there weren't exactly a lot of "engineers" running around to analyze this stuff. Most people in his day who would have attempted to build his things were probably not sophisticated enough to recognize even basic design flaws.

      Today you'd have to be more careful, but centuries ago?

  • Babbage did the same thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Caractacus Potts ( 74726 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @09:44PM (#4868008)
    Babbage supposedly did the same thing in case spies got ahold of his work.

    Babbage printer [bbc.co.uk]

  • Maps (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They do this on printed maps sometimes. Rand McNally, or whoever, will purposely misspell the name of a river or something mundane so that if anyone ever just reuses their material, it will be patently obvious, if their lawyers decide to check it out.
    • Oddly enough, the misspelled or incorrect information in question is considered a form of expression, and is therefore copyrightable. So, if you copy the map with the errors intact on it, you have violated the copyright. This is also done with phone books AFAIK.

      Without errors, maps and phone books could be copied verbatim and the publishers wouldn't be able to do anything about it because, without the errors, the published content is considered purely factual and is therefore not copyrightable.

      Strange but true....
  • In Soviet Russia, everyone is a gay, vegetarian, pacifist!

    No wait, that's California.

  • A paedophile actually. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Da Vinci, like not a few Florintines, was also what was what we now call (loaded term) a paedophile. He began living with Gaicomo Caprotti (Salai) - to whom he left half his vineyard, when the boy was ten. Da Vinci's final companion, Francesco Melzi, was bequeathed his drawings and papers.
    The denial of homosexuality by many historians is worthy of a study in itself. For for instance, Rictor Norton's excellent site:
    http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/
  • Archimedes [drexel.edu] wrote that he had done something similar to this.

    After having several of his discoveries published by unscrupulous collegues as their own, he began introducing flaws and leaving out the proofs when discussing his ideas. On one occasion, he passed off something completely false for one such plagiarist to filch.

    -Rick

  • Kinda funny... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by craenor ( 623901 ) on Thursday December 12, 2002 @01:13PM (#4872727) Homepage
    That Da Vinci was a pacificist..and yet was also the first sniper. Using a rifle of his own design, he shot and killed a french commander at over 300 yards. At the time, this was considered an impossible task.

  • Life protection. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Irvu ( 248207 ) on Thursday December 12, 2002 @01:30PM (#4872901)
    IMHO It could also be a life insurance policy. Think about it, although Machiavelli's [everything2.com] insights [everything2.com] onto how to run a kingdom were not widely availible (The Prince [promo.net] wasn't written until 1513 the same year that Da Vinci died) there was enough backstabbing and evil to go around in DaVinci's day. What's to stop the local prince (or would-be prince) from killing or torturing the man himself and stealing all his books and papers. Only the fact that without him the designs are useless. If you want the weapons then you'll need the man, alive, well, and on your side not in your dungeon.

  • Well He Did Write in a Mirror (Score:4, Interesting)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug AT geekazon DOT com> on Thursday December 12, 2002 @01:38PM (#4872983) Homepage
    Don't know if this is relevant, but to make his notes harder for others to read DaVinci often wrote backwards. Is is possible that some gearing and other things are reversed because he was also drawing backward and just made a few mistakes?
  • That's explains the mispelled stories, the wretched grammar, the inspired typos, and the duplicates and the duplicates!

    Cmdr, you are a genius the likes of which the world hath not seen since DaVinci!

    and the duplicates!

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