Leonardo da Vinci designed a diving suit for divers and proposed its use in military underwater operations.
His concept included a full-body suit, a breathing system, and a helmet arrangement intended to let a person remain underwater. The design is associated with Leonardo’s work in Venice, where he reportedly considered ways to defend the city against enemy ships. The surviving drawings are commonly dated to the early sixteenth century.
Leonardo’s proposal included breathing tubes connected to the surface and a system intended to manage the diver’s movement. Some later illustrations and reconstructions have added details not clearly present in the original evidence, so modern descriptions should distinguish the surviving design from later inventions.
The suit was not a modern scuba suit. It did not use compressed-air cylinders, regulators, or the compact equipment developed for twentieth-century diving. Leonardo’s design is important because it shows an early attempt to combine underwater clothing, breathing equipment, and military engineering in one system.