What protective clothing did Leonardo da Vinci design for underwater exploration?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a diving suit for underwater exploration.

His early sixteenth-century drawings show a diver equipped with a leather suit, mask, breathing tubes, and a reservoir or air-storage arrangement. The concept was associated with military underwater operations, including the possibility of damaging enemy ships. Leonardo’s notes also included details intended to help the diver move and remain supplied with air.

The design was never demonstrated as a functioning modern scuba system, and it did not use the compressed-air cylinders developed centuries later. Leonardo’s proposal is important because it combined several elements of underwater equipment in a systematic design.

Accounts sometimes call it a scuba suit, but that modern term can be misleading. Scuba means self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, while Leonardo’s drawings represent an early conceptual diving system rather than a tested self-contained apparatus.