Leonardo da Vinci designed an armored vehicle with a conical cover and surrounding guns around 1487.
The vehicle was intended to move across a battlefield while protecting its occupants. Its sloped outer shell was inspired partly by the shape of a tortoise and was planned to be covered with reinforced wood or metal plates. A circular platform inside carried light cannons aimed through openings in the armor.
The design is often called Leonardo’s fighting vehicle or Leonardo’s tank, but it was never built in his lifetime. It would have required several people to turn internal cranks connected to wheels. Some modern historians have suggested that a gearing error in the drawing may have been deliberate, preventing the machine from operating as shown.
Although it was not a practical tank by modern standards, the concept combined protection, mobility, and directed fire centuries before armored fighting vehicles became real military technology.