What Leonardo da Vinci machine used flowing water to power a saw for cutting wood?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a hydraulic saw powered by flowing water to cut wood.

The machine used a water wheel to provide rotary power. Gears and connecting parts converted that motion into the back-and-forth movement needed by a saw blade. A carriage or feeding arrangement could move timber toward the blade as the mechanism operated.

This design illustrates Leonardo’s interest in replacing repetitive human labor with controlled mechanical power. Water wheels were already used in mills, but Leonardo’s notebooks explored ways to adapt their energy to specialized industrial tasks, including sawing and material handling.

The hydraulic saw belongs to Leonardo’s engineering studies rather than to a clearly documented factory installation. Drawings preserve the mechanism, but surviving evidence does not establish that the exact design was built and operated at full scale during his lifetime.