Leonardo da Vinci designed an ornithopter, an aircraft intended to fly by flapping wings.
The word ornithopter combines Greek terms meaning “bird” and “wing.” Leonardo studied birds in flight and sketched machines with wings that a person could operate through pedals, levers, and other mechanical linkages. His designs were inspired by anatomy but were not practical aircraft.
Leonardo’s drawings generally placed the pilot inside or beneath a lightweight framework. The proposed wings were too heavy and lacked a usable power source, so no successful human-powered flight resulted from the designs. The concept is different from a helicopter, whose rotors spin, and from a glider, which flies without flapping wings.
Modern ornithopters use motors or other mechanisms to produce flapping motion. Leonardo’s work is remembered as an important early attempt to apply systematic observation of birds to aviation, centuries before powered flight became possible.