what were some inventions of leonardo da vinci?
Double hull Viola organista
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 During his lifetime , Leonardo was valued as an engineer . In a letter to Ludovico il Moro , he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege . When he fled to Venice in 1499 , he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack . He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno river , a project on which Niccolò Machiavelli also worked . Leonardo 's journals include a vast number of inventions , both practical and impractical . They include musical instruments , a mechanical knight , hydraulic pumps , reversible crank mechanisms , finned mortar shells , and a steam cannon . 

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 Today , Leonardo is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived . 

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 Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor , for the better part of four hundred years his fame rested on his achievements as a painter and on a handful of works , either authenticated or attributed to him that have been regarded as among the masterpieces . 

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 Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight for much of his life , producing many studies including Codex on the Flight of Birds ( c . 1505 ) , as well as plans for several flying machines such as a flapping ornithopter and a machine with a helical rotor . The British television station Channel Four commissioned a 2003 documentary Leonardo 's Dream Machines . Leonardo 's designs for machines such as a parachute , and giant crossbow were interpreted , constructed and tested . Some of those designs proved successes , whilst others fared less well when practically tested . 

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 Leonardo 's The Battle of Anghiara was commissioned in 1505 , but was lost . All that remains is a copy by Rubens , but Maurizio Seracini is convinced it can still be found and has spent a lifetime searching for it . He was allowed to drill some pilot holes in a mural in the Salone dei Cinquecento , Palazzo Vecchio , Florence , and his team did find evidence of an oil painting underneath . 
