Leonardo da Vinci designed an armored vehicle with a conical body, wheels, and defensive armor.
The vehicle appears in a drawing from the late fifteenth century and is commonly called Leonardo’s fighting vehicle or Leonardo’s tank. Its sloping cover was intended to deflect incoming projectiles, while openings around the structure allowed guns to fire outward.
The design was powered by cranks connected to wheels. A famous problem is that some interpretations of the drawing show gears arranged so the vehicle would move backward rather than forward. Historians disagree about whether this was an intentional security measure, a copying error, or simply an uncorrected design flaw.
The vehicle was not a modern tank and was never used in battle. It lacked an engine, suspension, and practical crew arrangements. Its significance is that Leonardo combined mobile artillery with armored protection more than three centuries before motorized tanks appeared in World War I.