What kind of wings did Leonardo da Vinci’s ornithopter use?

Leonardo da Vinci’s ornithopter used flapping wings.

An ornithopter is an aircraft intended to fly by moving its wings like a bird or insect. Leonardo studied bird flight and designed several human-powered flying machines with wings operated by mechanical linkages. His notes examined lift, balance, wing movement, and the structure of feathers.

Leonardo’s ornithopters were never successfully flown. A human pilot could not supply the power needed to flap wings large enough to lift both the machine and its occupant. Later aircraft succeeded by using fixed wings and engines, rather than copying the power-intensive motion of birds.

The designs still mattered historically because they treated flight as an engineering problem. Leonardo combined observations from nature with sketches of frames, controls, and mechanisms. The word ornithopter now covers aircraft that fly by flapping wings, whether powered by people, engines, or other systems.