Albuquerque nuclear museum pays homage to da Vinci's inventions

Mar. 2—ALBUQUERQUE — Irene Stamm encouraged her husband, Jason, to wander off to look at the nuclear stuff for a while so she could play with the da Vinci toys.

She had a lot to choose from: The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History has about 30 of the Italian Renaissance artist's machines on display as part of a traveling interactive exhibition that runs through mid-May.

There were gadgets with pulleys and weights and balls that could be cranked up. There was a robotic drummer whose beat sounded like that guy who sits on a ship and plays drums to keep the oarsmen rowing in rhythm.

And above the Stamms were flying creations — a hang glider, a pyramid-shaped parachute, a huge-winged something or other.

It was all stuff people got accustomed to seeing and using in the 18th and 19th centuries, perhaps, but it was designed by Leonardo da Vinci centuries before. As such, it's an exhibition where Mona Lisa meets Game of Thrones and intersects with Star Wars — and where kids of all ages can tinker with most of the wooden contraptions on hand.

"I want to play here," said Irene Stamm. "I can't get bored here. He [da Vinci] probably never got bored."

Da Vinci Machines, The Exhibition celebrates what may be a less-known aspect of the artist, thinker, designer and scholar's career.

"He had a lot of different ideas about robotics, early mechanics, early flight stuff, a lot of which had never been tested," Ryan Painter, director of exhibits at the museum, said in an interview at the site.

"He would try to come up with problems and then come up with ideas and concepts to get around those," he said.

Pointing to a wooden bicycle designed by da Vinci, perhaps with the assistance of one of his apprentices, Painter said, "A lot of these ideas and concepts seem second nature to people now, but they were revolutionary ideas at the time."

The bicycle may have been intended for some kind of theatrical performance, according to a text box near the bike. Most bicycle historians credit German Karl von Drais with coming up with the first steerable two-wheeled invention to be considered a bike. But if von Drais is indeed the father of the bicycle, you have to wonder if da Vinci wasn't its unheralded grandfather.

And some 400 years before the Wright Brothers conducted the first sustained airplane flight, da Vinci was sketching out concepts with wings to explore the notion of human-propelled flight.

His ornithopter — showcased in the exhibition — was an attempt to imitate the way birds fly by allowing a human to use a series of ropes, pulleys, wooden wings and wing joints to fly a glider-type machine. Apparently the human attached to this thing would have to flap furiously to get off the ground and get into the air.

A 2006 CBS News report on the machine credited da Vinci with coming up with the plans in 1490. "Over the centuries, many gliding models and fully motorized ornithopters have been built by inventors around the world, but none were able to fly for any appreciable time or distance," the report says.

But in July 2006, James DeLaurier, an aeronautics engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, "achieved the first sustained pilot-controlled jet-boosted ornithopter flight."

More threatening in style are an eight-cannon circular boat and a wheeled "tank" invention. Da Vinci also came up with an ingenious plan to use mechanized wooden beams that push out from a fortress wall and knock back any ladders set up by invading forces.

These inventions should be no surprise to anyone who has studied da Vinci, a polymath who was versed in drawing, designing, painting, sculpting and other arts, said Paul Anderson, an art historian who specializes in the Italian Renaissance.

He said while the notion of specializing in a particular trade became commonplace in the 18th century, in da Vinci's time "people could wear several hats" and be known for many talents.

So it's not unusual to think of the man who painted or drew such artistic masterworks as Mona Lisa,The Last Supper and Vitruvian Man as someone who could design military machinery, he said.

Da Vinci spent about 20 years working for Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan, marketing himself as "a military engineer," Anderson said.

"He sells himself not so much for his painting but more for how he can help build defenses. ... He can help them with city fortifications," Anderson said.

Anderson said it is important to understand some of da Vinci's creations were "based on fantasy. Some things ... may have had an actual application but other things" did not.

Painter said the project, created by the exhibition organization Artisans of Florence, has already proved popular with students who enjoy the "hands-on" aspect of the machines.

Despite the museum's focus on nuclear energy, weapons and related history, Painter said, it is "interesting for visitors to come in and see something not related to the Manhattan Project or [J. Robert] Oppenheimer. It's an extra treat when you come in here."

The Stamms, in fact, said they were inspired to visit the museum after seeing the critically acclaimed box office hit Oppenheimer.

"He was so ahead of his time," Jason Stamm said of da Vinci. "Look at his parachute design. It's pretty similar to what we have now."

Irene Stamm said she can see the fertile mind of an always-thinking inventor in the works on display. Da Vinci, she said, must have "always had ideas and stayed focused on them."

Unless, she added "he got distracted by another project."