Leonardo da Vinci designed an ornithopter as a birdlike flying machine with wings intended to flap through human power. The name comes from Greek words meaning “bird” and “wing,” so it describes a class of aircraft rather than one particular Leonardo drawing.
Leonardo studied birds, bats, and the mechanics of flight extensively. His surviving notebooks contain several winged-machine concepts, including designs in which a pilot would use pedals, levers, or other mechanisms to move the wings. The drawings show his attempt to translate natural flight into engineering principles.
Leonardo’s ornithopter was never built into a successful man-powered aircraft. Human muscles cannot provide enough sustained power to lift a person using flapping wings of the proposed scale. This is why the design should not be confused with Leonardo’s separate airscrew concept, which resembles a helicopter rotor but was also only a design.