Leonardo da Vinci designed an armored tank with a conical shell and several cannons.
The fighting vehicle appears in Leonardo’s notebooks from the late 15th century. Its sloped outer shell was intended to deflect enemy projectiles, while cannons were arranged around the platform so the vehicle could fire in multiple directions. The machine was to be moved by people turning internal cranks connected to wheels.
This vehicle was never built for Renaissance warfare. A well-known drawing appears to contain a gearing problem that would prevent the wheels from turning correctly, although historians debate whether this was deliberate, accidental, or simply an incomplete design. The machine was not a modern tank because it had no engine, tracks, or enclosed crew compartment in the twentieth-century sense.
Leonardo’s design is commonly called an armored tank or fighting vehicle. Its importance lies in combining armor, mobility, and all-around firepower in a single proposed machine.