Well, then allow me to fight your ignorance. English does not treat every famous person the same. Each name follows its own path where it is affected by a number of variables, including how often it’s referenced, by whom and how common the name is in the general population. If there’s a styleguide that mandates a particular format that you are bound by then the question is settled. If, however, there is no guide but the referent is clearly delineated by the speaker (which it was), who the fuck cares if they use the surname or the place of origin?
- I have not called anyone ignorant. Violates Rhymer Rule 12.
- I have also, as we say in the sales world, dropped the rope. Note the post above that which I quote.
It is not unheard of for a person to be brilliant in some areas and a total crackpot in others. See for example, Newton’s fascination with alchemy, and Tesla’s 1920s style death ray.
That does not suggest Leonardo got the ideas from the Chinese – how could he have, in those days, with such limited contact between China and Europe? Much more likely he thought of them independently.
Stop being smarter than me, damn it, or there will be blood. I totally should have brought that up. 
The resemblance to Chinese war machines is probably due to the limited technologies available. Wood was the primary material, metal was used sparingly. They had wheels and rope and wood to work with, some use of pulleys and crude gears. There aren’t many variations on the the classic machines built with that level of technology.
I remember a TV show about people making some of Leonardo’s inventions. I really liked it. They had this one guy that wanted to make all of his cuts, even really intricate ones, with a chainsaw. Is that the show you were on? Are there more shows in the can, and are they ever going to be broadcast or put online?
I already have.
Be patient, kanicbird will start one a week from Thursday.
Thats the show I was on. I was only responsible for building the part of the machine that were powered by bending wood. The part that upset me about the show was that I wanted to have some discussion with the proffessor and the other craftsman on what was expected of the machine. They just said do it exactly like the drawing and basicaly don’t worry about it. My arguement was that the an engineer or inventer would fully expect a prototype to undergo some alterations and fine tuning but that was shot down. I went home and built several scaled down prototypes on my own time to make sure my giant wood bow matched the design of the machine. The drawing showed a bow that was 8" thick, my finished product was slightly under 3" thick. I based the power of the bow on the gear ratios of the cranks that would be used to winch it back and I based the throwing arm on the g forces that would be applied to it durring the throw itself. I was happy with my calculations as I hit the limits perfectly.
We did several more involvng all wood bow power that have not been shown.
http://www.hucbald.ramst.ca/articles/leonardo_catapult.html
Here is a link to one of them shown on the program. If I would have had this little bit of info at the time of the build it would have been a different build.
Reading this link I can see now that it was planned as a flat leaf spring to be bent, which is what made sense to me at the time judging by the thickness. I built it as a laminate shaped like the preloaded version you see in the drawing.
Complete crap. Please link to a definitive cite that calling Leonardo “da Vinci” is wrong.
I thought that was French for “The light’s out in the bathroom.” 
Which doesn’t make sense, since some aspects of the design wouldn’t come through in the diagram. What species of wood should be used? Should it be solid, or a glued laminate, or maybe a loose laminate? Which direction should the major and minor grain be in? A subject matter expert, who knows the purpose of the part, might be able to make some judgements on those questions, but it’s going to be a lot harder without knowing the purpose.
(aside: You’re the flight archery guy, right? I guess that’s why they picked you for the wood-bending parts.)
I knew how to execute a design that would work, I was not sure about the intent of the drawing. I felt it should have been a flat stack of wood that would act as a leaf spring once bent but I could get a lot more power and more efficient power by laminating it as I did. The only source I had for the limits on this large bow were the gear ratios on the cranking device. I made an estimate of how much friction would be lost in the gears and then tried to max it out to one mans ability to crank. I hit that pretty much right on. However I do believe the flat leaf spring was the intent. I would have had to experiment some with the leaf spring as I have no experience with them in big bending compositions.
If she had been willing to wear a skirt, they wouldn’t have burned her. (Or at least, they would have had to trump up another charge.)
I can’t see that assertion getting any torque.
I think the surname thing is an interesting discussion, but feel we have all made somewhat of a nuisance of ourselves in this thread (which is about the originality of his work). I opened another thread hereto continue the surname debate.
Is it even plagiarism when someone makes a better mousetrap? I guess it would be if you then claimed to have invented all mousetraps, but invention seldom exists in a vacuum.
Might as well be saying that Leonardo da Vinci was plagiarising the work of birds when he drew this
Anyone know where Caprio is?