Leonardo da Vinci’s armored vehicle with conical armor and surrounding cannons is known as Leonardo’s tank.
Leonardo drew the design around 1487 in a manuscript now associated with the British Library. Its cone-shaped cover was intended to deflect enemy fire, while several light cannons projected through openings around the lower perimeter. The vehicle was to be moved by people or horses turning internal cranks connected to wheels.
The design is often called a tank, but it was not a working modern tank. It had no engine, and its proposed gearing appears problematic: some reconstructions suggest the vehicle’s wheels would turn in conflicting directions. Historians therefore treat it as a conceptual military machine rather than a practical armored fighting vehicle.
The drawing belongs to Leonardo’s wider interest in battlefield engineering, which also included bridges, artillery, fortified positions, and devices for launching projectiles. The modern tank developed much later, during the First World War.