Leonardo’s aerial screw
The short answer
Leonardo da Vinci’s 1480s design for a machine that would screw itself into the air, and why it could never fly.
0:26History of ideasBeginnerLeonardo da Vinciflightinventions
Chapters and transcript
- 0:00
A screw that bites the air
In the late 1480s Leonardo da Vinci sketched an “aerial screw”: a spiral sail of starched linen on a light frame, meant to climb into the air the way a screw goes into wood.
- 0:07
Turn it, and it grips
Men standing on a round deck would push bars to turn the central mast and spin the spiral.
- 0:13
Air goes down, it goes up
A turning spiral pushes air downward, and the air pushes back up on the sail. Modern helicopter rotors rely on the same idea of lift from a spinning surface.
- 0:19
Why it never flew
The screw needed far more power than four men could give, and nothing stopped the deck from spinning the other way. It stayed a drawing, but the idea returned centuries later.