Leonardo da Vinci’s armored vehicle sketch is commonly called Leonardo’s tank. The design shows a large, conical wooden cover resembling a turtle shell, with openings for cannons around the lower edge.
Leonardo probably intended the vehicle as a mobile artillery platform for warfare. Internal cranks and gears were meant to turn wheels and move the machine, while the sloped exterior could help deflect projectiles. The vehicle was never built during Leonardo’s lifetime.
Modern reconstructions often point out that the surviving drawing appears to contain a mechanical problem: some gears would make the wheels turn in conflicting directions. Historians debate whether this was an error, a deliberate alteration, or an incomplete design.
It is called a tank because its enclosed, armored form resembles later armored vehicles, but it was not a practical modern tank. The first operational tanks appeared more than four centuries later, during World War I.