Leonardo da Vinci designed an armored tank with a conical body and cannon openings.
His fighting-vehicle design, usually called Leonardo’s tank, was drawn in the late fifteenth century. The vehicle had a broad, rounded, or conical shell intended to deflect attacks, multiple cannon ports, and a crew inside who would turn internal cranks to move it.
The machine was not a modern tank: it had no engine, tracks, or independent suspension. The surviving drawing also contains a gearing problem that would make the vehicle move in the wrong direction if built exactly as shown. Historians debate whether that mistake was deliberate or simply an error in the design.
Leonardo’s vehicle was never documented in combat. Its importance lies in combining armor, mobility, and gunfire in one proposed machine, centuries before powered tanks appeared during the First World War.