Leonardo da Vinci designed a screw pump to move water from a lower level to a higher one.
The device used a helical screw inside a cylindrical or partly enclosed housing. As the screw turned, water was carried upward along the spiral. Leonardo's design belongs to the long history of screw-based water-lifting machines, whose ancient predecessor is commonly called Archimedes' screw.
Leonardo drew and studied hydraulic machines for irrigation, drainage, canal work, and construction. His versions show how Renaissance engineers adapted older principles and explored improved arrangements for power transmission and water movement.
The machine should not be confused with a modern centrifugal pump, which accelerates water outward with a rotating impeller. A screw pump transports water along a helical path. Leonardo's work was inventive, but the underlying screw principle was already known many centuries earlier.