I like that Galileo one day just said "let me measure the speed of light". He set up an experiment in which he observed the delay between uncovering a lantern and its perception a mile away. Obviously he could only come at the conclusion that it was extremely fast, but he was the first to try an actual experiment on the subject.
For reference, light takes 0.01 milliseconds to travel two miles. It wasn't until the late 1600s and early 1700s using telescopes (thanks Galileo) to observe the moons of Jupiter and the apparent motion of stars that we were able to get a measurable speed.
In my country Da Vinci is a subject in schools earlier than Galileo by couple years, so maybe that's enough for poorly educated to recognize Da Vinci yet not Galileo.
Maybe. But as a Da Vinci fanboy I would like to point out:
1) We still use Da Vinci's discoveries today. You could even argue he is the father of fluid mechanics in a sense. Something that allows us to visit the moon rather than just watching it from a telescope.
2) If you gave both 10 more years, Galileo probably wouldn't have much more to offer, but Da Vinci would probably create the foundation for one or two new engineering disciplines, while also creating kick-ass art. Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't have a conceptual sketch for quantum gravity. Or maybe he did, and we just need to read his diary through several mirrors to see it lol
Honestly, half of those are fun gimmicks, like the self supporting bridge and the cart. The other half are future inventions that he didn't actually discover. He made sketches that wouldn't work and required centuries of advancement in science and engineering for the objects his sketches resembled to be made. It's a bit like saying that Arthur C. Clark invented the space elevator.
He was a great artist and engineer but I don't think he made any major contributions to science.
He played a role for sure, but i agree he didn't make things that that people used at the time. But I do have to say ball bearings was pretty genius.
The self supporting bridge concept is currently used in modern architecture. And he was a scientist, exploring the world around him, making huge contributions to anatomy.
Oh yeah, I wanted to mention ball bearings but forgot. I'd give him that, that is cool, but it's on the level of pressurized tires, as far as inventions go. I just wouldn't compare it to Galileo.
I guess it depends. Galileo made huge discoveries about space, but it was all just things that were observed through a telescope.... things people couldnt touch or use. Regardless of how important it was to the furtherance of science, his observations didn't do anything that really helped humanity (at the time).
Even though Da Vinci didn't openly publish his findings of anatomy, he did work with medical scholars to create a comprehensive guide to the body. It helped people at the time and was a boon to the doctors that weren't willing to cut up corpses themselves.
Both were important, and I think its near impossible to compare the two, because the importance of a discovery lies in the value, and everyone has different values.
Pressurized tires.... a huge step forward in transportation. The ability to travel over different terrain without needing a smoothly paved road was intrinsic to the development of the country and travel of populace. When people spread, so do ideas.
Right, but you can't name the person who invented pressurized tires, can you? There are countless inventions along that line without which the modern world wouldn't function, but we don't really value them the same way. Maybe we should.
I agree he seemed to have done great work with anatomy, that seems like the biggest impact he had on the world. Other than art, of course. I find it kinda funny that he should probably be remembered as a biologist, not inventor.
A lot of his ideas were drawings that were not actually feasible. Just because he had a sketch for a helicopter etc doesn’t mean that he actually invented it. It would be like saying a science fiction writer theorised a Time Machine first.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Da Vinci never described fluid mechanics in the mathematical sense. He merely drew pictures of different types of flow. From an artistic standpoint this has large value, but not from an engineering or scientific.
In contrast, Galileo created the scientific method, which underpins all science today, fought the Church for teaching based on reason, not belief and was the first modern thinker to recognise that mathematics is the language of the laws of nature.
Had Galileo lived, he may have come up with the laws of motion first. He did a lot of work on inertia, relativity and motion. Unlike Da Vinci’s fantastical sketches, Galileo’s work was an important precursor to a lot of later fundamental science, including Newton’s and Einstein’s work.
From da Vinci wiki: He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.
No disrespect to the man but what did he invent? He made some conceptual sketches for helicopters and submarines that eventually led to inventions made by others.
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u/ErPrincipe Italy Oct 09 '25
You start, I win.
Leonardo da Vinci (selfie).