Leonardo da Vinci designed an anemometer to measure wind speed and direction.
His design used a hinged plate that the wind pushed upward. The angle of the plate could be compared with a graduated scale, providing an indication of wind strength. Leonardo recorded the instrument in his notebooks while studying flight and atmospheric movement.
The device was not a modern cup or propeller anemometer, and it did not produce a digital numerical reading. It was a practical observational instrument based on the force of moving air. Leonardo’s interest in wind measurement was closely connected with his investigations of birds, gliders, and flying machines.
The word anemometer comes from Aeolus, the Greek keeper of the winds. Later instruments used rotating cups, vanes, or heated wires, but Leonardo’s hinged-plate design belongs to the early history of mechanical wind measurement.