Leonardo da Vinci designed an armored tank with sloped plates and internal cannon.
His fighting vehicle was a conical, covered platform mounted on wheels. The sloping outer shell was intended to deflect enemy fire, while several light cannons projected through openings around the vehicle. A group of men inside would turn cranks connected to the wheels.
The design appears in Leonardo’s notebooks from the late fifteenth century, when Italian states frequently fought using artillery, fortifications, and mercenary armies. It was not built as a working battlefield vehicle in Leonardo’s lifetime. The machine would have been heavy, difficult to steer, and hard to move with the proposed internal drive system.
Modern writers sometimes call it the first tank, but that label is retrospective. Tanks require many later technologies, including reliable engines, tracks, armor production, and coordinated military tactics. Leonardo’s drawing is better understood as an early armored fighting-vehicle concept.