Leonardo da Vinci sketched an armored tank, a covered fighting vehicle intended to move across a battlefield.
His famous design, drawn around 1487, resembles a broad conical shell mounted on a circular platform. Sloping armor was intended to deflect incoming projectiles, while cannons around the platform could fire in multiple directions. The vehicle was to be moved by people turning internal cranks connected to wheels.
The machine was never built for Renaissance warfare. Its proposed mechanism has a serious practical problem: the gear arrangement shown in surviving drawings would make the wheels turn in opposite directions. Some historians have suggested that this may have been deliberate concealment, a drafting error, or an unresolved design flaw. The vehicle’s modern label, “tank,” is retrospective rather than Leonardo’s own name.
The sketch is better understood as an imaginative armored fighting vehicle than as a working prototype of a modern tank. It also differs from Leonardo’s separate designs for large weapons and siege equipment.