Leonardo da Vinci sketched an armored tank-like fighting vehicle with sloped armor and multiple cannons.
The design appears in Leonardo’s notebooks from around 1487. It was a conical, covered vehicle intended to protect soldiers while allowing them to fire weapons through openings around its perimeter. The machine was powered by people turning cranks connected to wheels.
The vehicle was never built for Renaissance warfare. Its proposed mechanism appears to contain a problem that would make the wheels turn in conflicting directions, although historians debate whether this was an intentional safeguard or a design error. The sloped armor was useful because angled surfaces could deflect attacks more effectively than flat plates.
Leonardo’s machine was not a modern tank. The first tanks used in combat appeared during the First World War, more than four centuries later. His sketch is important as an early concept for an armored, mobile weapons platform.