Leonardo da Vinci designed an ornithopter as a flying machine with bird-like flapping wings.
The word ornithopter comes from Greek roots meaning “bird” and “wing.” Leonardo studied birds carefully and filled his notebooks with observations about their wings, muscles, balance, and flight paths. His proposed machine would have required a human pilot to generate wing movement, but no evidence shows that Leonardo built or successfully tested it.
Leonardo’s design reflects Renaissance attempts to understand flight through anatomy and mechanics. A common mix-up is calling every Leonardo flying-machine sketch a helicopter or parachute. Those were separate concepts: his ornithopter used flapping wings, while his aerial screw used a rotating helical surface and his pyramid-shaped parachute used a fixed canopy.
Modern ornithopters are lightweight aircraft or model machines that fly by mechanically flapping wings, making Leonardo’s basic idea recognizable even though his human-powered version was impractical.