Leonardo da Vinci designed an armored tank as a covered, armored fighting machine.
His late-15th-century design showed a conical wooden cover reinforced with metal plates. Several crew members inside would turn cranks connected to wheels, allowing the vehicle to move across a battlefield while shielding its operators.
The design is often called Leonardo’s tank, although it was never built or used in war. Some modern reconstructions found that the surviving drawing contains a gearing problem that would prevent normal movement; this may have been deliberate to keep the mechanism secret. It was not a modern engine-powered tank, and it differed from Leonardo’s separate armored war chariot concepts.