What did Leonardo da Vinci design in 1495 that could move and perform motions?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a robot knight in 1495 that could move and perform motions.

The machine was created for a pageant or entertainment setting at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Leonardo’s drawings show an armored figure operated by a system of cables, pulleys, and gears hidden inside its body.

The mechanism could reportedly sit, stand, move its arms, and move its head and jaw. It was not an autonomous robot in the modern electronic sense; it was a programmable-looking mechanical automaton powered by human-set mechanisms.

The original machine disappeared, but engineer Mark Rosheim reconstructed it in 2002 using Leonardo’s surviving sketches. The reconstruction helped demonstrate that the drawings contain enough mechanical information for a working interpretation, while some details remain uncertain.