Leonardo…
Yesterday, I was roped into driving on a field trip to Sacramento, to the AeroSpace museum, which is located at the former McClellan AFB. They are currently hosting an exhibit called The DaVinci Experience. It was pretty cool…they started out with a short video of DaVinci’s life, telling about his genius and some of the discoveries that he made. I was a bit concerned, thinking that if I drove an hour and a half at $3.32 a gallon to watch a video, I wasn’t going to be happy. Esp since I saw gas for sale in Sacramento at $2.99 a gallon, which made me madder. Anyway, I got over that pretty quickly, because the video was just a short intro, and the main point of the exhibit is reconstructions that were made of some of DaVinci’s simple, elegant inventions.  Bicycles, helicopters, all kinds of weaponry and energy saving devices were recreated, using materials that would have been available during DaVinci’s life, and using his drawings as inspiration. It was pretty cool. They also spotlighted some of his more famous paintings and sketches. I had a thought at one point…this genius of a man thought of SO many inventions…what if he had never been born, or had died as an infant. What if he had never invented his machines. We assume that they would have been invented sooner or later, eventually…they are so simple and perfect, we cannot imagine that no one else would have conceived of them. And of course, it’s possible that another genius would have come along, or a hundred geniuses, to invent the things that he did…but isn’t it also conceivable that some of them would have gone undiscovered to this day? That we might today live without the bicycle, or some other fundamental piece of culture developed by DaVinci? I don’t know…I’m just thinkin’….
10 Comments
dew
You might enjoy the book How to Think Like Leonardo DaVinci.
Ml
I guess if you didn’t have it, you don’t miss it or you don’t think about it? Gets you thinking, though.
DaVinci – brilliant!
Py Korry
In a Star Trek/parallel universe way, it would be interesting to see our society if he was never born.
V-Grrrl
We saw this same exhibit in Rome in November. And in June 2005, we visited DaVinci’s grave in France.
He truly was an extraordinary man.
Gina
Sounds very cool!
I hear you, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if people like him and Newton never existed, or died before they had a chance to do all their stuff. Would someone else have come up with the same thing?
Wanderlust Scarlett
Shivered with thrills in reading this… how EXCITING!!!
I love aerospace everything (I am a pilot), I absolutely love DaVinci; he’s one of the most amazing geniuses in the history of mankind, and I love California too.
Miss it a bit.
Can you imagine what he and Galileo and Benjamin Franklin might come up with NOW, if they could be here together today and knew what we know now? It’s staggering to consider.
What a great way to spend a day! Thank you for posting this… the choice of pictures is a nice touch too.
I enjoyed this so much, thanks
Scarlett
Starshine
Sounds like a fascinating exhibit. It also makes me wonder how many of us have something–a dream, an idea, a song–to gift the world with, just lounging around in our brains.
Kate
Oh too bad! If I had known, I would have played hookey & come over & had a coffee with you, if you had time.
I’ve never been to that museum, I guess I’d better rectify that oversight!
lalunas
OOOOOh Gaytor and Big Sis would of loved to see this, and also me. Sounds so cool.
Maya's Granny
Heinlein wrote a book in which a man named Leonard Vincent tests a time machine into the past and they can’t retrieve him. The narrator wonders if he worked his way to Italy and set up shop?