Los dibujos ocultos de Leonardo da Vinci

Abstract

The engineers of the Renaissance frequently had to conceal by cryptography secrets of their work in matter of fortifications, war engines, or play machines for joy of their Prince. Leonardo too had the same need towards some planes of selfmoving and war engines. But Leonardo’s thought rather wanders from that one of his contemporary men of science. In fact he has the concept of modulus by which he decomposes the engine in its elements understanding every single element as self-contained, reproducible object to employ in different ways in different contexts. By this innovating conception of engine as a object-project Leonardo is able to conceal the mechanical planes spreading every its element in different drawings without numbering and scattered in different pages so numerous that nowadays to restore the whole project of an engine it is absolutely necessary the concept of hypertext.