User:Multiliteralist/Leonardo daVinci's secret failures

Leonardo da Vinci (AD 1427 - AD 1548) Was not quite the genius we often give him credit for. Besides a list of devices he is supposed to have invented (a helicopter, a tank, a pop-up toaster) - some of which may even have worked - we also have a list of quite a few that didn't work at all. The designs of those were left to a humble servant to burn after the "great" artist died. Luckily for historians, the servant failed his duty. We do not know what came over him - a moron would have seen the inane scribblings were fit to be burned.

During 2008, Professor Lara Croft unearthed a chest containing manuscripts, sketches, half eaten sandwiches and false beards at Krankies College, Cambridge. Professor Croft believes the items were deposited in the college during the eighteenth century when the 1st Duke of Devonshire gave the college various Renaissance paintings and a "collection of stuff in a trunk" in lieu of an unpaid bill. The paintings were soon sold on, but the papers, beards and sandwiches were left undisturbed for almost three centuries. (an interlude here perhaps?)

Store for loose ideas; use these if you like

• The Ornithopter, dubbed "The Flying Fuck" by Thomas Alva Edison
• The Atom Splitter
• The Annal Rammer obviously meant for ramming annals, you know, yearbooks...
• Renaissance Trouser Press. Leonardo invented the trouser press as he kept getting ladders in his stockings. This was bad enough but with ladders came buckets, sponges and whistling out of tune. However, wearing trousers or pantaloons would not catch on for another three hundred years.
• Left Handed Kitchen Utensils. The scissors, particularly, were a failure: the design was such a faulty one that people invariably cut themselves with them.
• Medical Day Time Television dramas. By showing that human bodies are just flesh and blood and not filled with strange magical vapours, Leonardo Da Vinci invented medical dramas. His detailed anatomical studies of executed criminals,dead mothers and er..horses would later inspire the authors of "Doctor Finlay's Casebook", "General Hospital" and "Black Beauty". Doctor Crippen got his inspiration from a different source (he couldn't stand hearing his wife singing.)
• The Scribble Code. Leonardo spent years on this one. His intention was to develop a code for the military - one that would never be worked out by anyone. As was typical of him, he left out a hint too many and forgot how the code worked, himself. In his letter to Michelangelo (Caravaggio, not the other one) he writes: "I don't know what the ____ came over me when I forgot the ____ right there. Now I cannot be _____ to find out, any more, and I doubt anyone else gives a ____. I must have been a right dumb mother______ at the time." It seems his intention was that Caravaggio help him out with the missing links and thus helps him crack the code. Caravaggio just shrugged, apparently, and put the letter in the pile with other inane letters Da Vinci had sent him. It must be mentioned that this failure cost Da Vinci a fortune.

Maybe this guillotine-like two-bit machine was what made the Inquisition so mad at Da Vinci. Leonardo explained that the machine was intended for splitting "atoms" and didn't have anything to do with any revolutions.

This sketch, found among the scraps of paper at Krankies College, portrays a device that distantly looks like a simple distillery - with a lit fuse attached. Some historians have wondered if this was an attempt at designing explosives that would differ from the gunpowder-based ones the Mongols had brought to warfare during the Middle Ages. As we know, the Catholic Church did not view any of the Mongols' improvements as suitable for Christian armies.