Leonardo da Vinci designed an armoured tank with a conical protective body and internal hand cranks.
The vehicle appears in Leonardo’s military engineering studies from the late 15th century. Its shell was intended to shield soldiers while a ring of light cannons projected through openings around the lower edge. Internal operators would turn cranks connected to wheels, theoretically moving the machine across a battlefield.
Leonardo’s vehicle was never built for Renaissance warfare. Its armour would have made it extremely heavy, and a commonly discussed drawing shows the drive system arranged in a way that would make the wheels turn against each other. Some historians interpret that inconsistency as an error; others have suggested deliberate concealment from military patrons.
The design is popularly called Leonardo’s tank, but it was a wheeled armoured fighting vehicle, not a modern tracked tank. The first operational tanks appeared centuries later during World War I.