Leonardo da Vinci designed an ornithopter as a winged flying machine intended to carry a person by flapping.
Leonardo’s flight studies closely examined birds, bats, and the movement of wings. His ornithopter drawings show a human pilot operating large wings through pedals, levers, and other mechanical linkages. The goal was to imitate powered animal flight rather than simply glide on fixed wings.
The machine was never demonstrated as a successful human-powered aircraft. Human muscles cannot provide the same power-to-weight performance as the flight muscles of a bird of comparable size, and the proposed mechanisms would have been heavy. Leonardo also investigated gliders and other aerial ideas, so not every flying-machine drawing is an ornithopter.
An ornithopter is defined by flapping wings, regardless of whether the machine is powered by a person, an engine, or another mechanism. That distinguishes it from a glider, whose wings remain fixed during flight.