Leonardo da Vinci designed a tribometer for testing friction between surfaces.
A tribometer is an instrument used to study friction, wear, and lubrication. Leonardo’s design applied a known load to a sliding block and used the resulting behavior to investigate resistance between materials. This made it an early attempt to measure friction systematically.
Leonardo’s notebooks show that he understood friction as a force that opposed motion. He also recognized that friction depended on the load and the nature of the surfaces. His work predates the later formal laws of friction commonly associated with Guillaume Amontons and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb.
The name tribometer comes from Greek roots connected with rubbing and measurement. It is not the same as an odometer, which measures distance, or an anemometer, which measures wind speed. Leonardo’s importance lies in treating friction as an engineering quantity that could be tested experimentally.