Leonardo da Vinci designed cranes using a rotating drum and a crank to lift heavy loads.
His engineering notebooks contain many lifting devices, including cranes with ropes, pulleys, geared drums, and counterweights. Turning a crank wound the rope around a drum, while the supporting frame kept the mechanism stable. Such machines could raise building materials more efficiently than direct manual lifting.
Leonardo did not invent the crane; lifting devices had been used since antiquity. His drawings are valuable because they explore improvements in control, reach, and mechanical advantage. A crane's mechanical advantage depends on features such as pulley arrangement and drum radius, not simply on the presence of a crank. Leonardo's designs therefore belong to a continuing engineering tradition rather than a single original invention.