What human-shaped automaton did Leonardo da Vinci design in 1495?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight in 1495.

The design was an armored humanoid figure created for a pageant at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Leonardo’s notes and drawings indicate that the mechanism could sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its head and jaw. Cables, pulleys, and gears transmitted motion from an internal operating system.

The figure is often called Leonardo’s robot, although “robot” is a modern term that did not exist in Renaissance Italy. It was an automaton intended for entertainment and spectacle, not an autonomous artificial intelligence machine.

No original mechanical knight has survived. In the 20th century, researchers reconstructed versions using Leonardo’s surviving drawings and related notes. Those reconstructions demonstrated that the design could produce several of the movements attributed to it.