Old ideas and later inventions

AN INTERESTING EXHIBITION “Leonardo da Vinci as Inventor” was shown a few years ago in several cities of America. The models were admirable but I had grave doubts about the educational value of the exhibition which was visited by thousands of school children without the guide of an expert. Many of them left the show with the idea that Da Vinci, among scores of other things, had invented the flying machine; not knowing that all endeavours of human beings to lift themselves in still air, even for minutes, was doomed to failure as long as no motor existed in which the ratio of power to weight was far better than in human beings. The boys and girls could not know that Da Vinci was as far from the solution of the problem as the old Greek poet who had invented the beautiful tale of “Daedalus and Icarus.”