Leonardo da Vinci designed a covered, armored platform on wheels known as an armored tank.
Leonardo’s fighting vehicle appears in a drawing usually dated to about 1487–1489. It has a conical cover resembling an inverted tortoise shell, armor plating, and multiple guns arranged around its perimeter. The vehicle was intended to advance toward enemy forces while protecting the people inside.
The design was powered by cranks connected to wheels, with several operators expected to turn them. Some modern commentators point out that the gearing shown in the drawing would make the vehicle difficult or impossible to move as drawn. Whether that was a deliberate secret error or simply an engineering flaw remains debated, but the vehicle was never built for Renaissance warfare.
It is called a tank because of its armored, wheeled role, not because it matches the tracked tanks developed during the First World War. Leonardo’s design is better understood as an imaginative precursor to armored fighting vehicles.