Leonardo da Vinci designed a diving suit for underwater exploration in Venice.
His early-sixteenth-century concept included a leather suit, a mask, and breathing tubes connected to floating air chambers. The design was intended to let divers remain underwater while carrying out a military or engineering operation. Leonardo’s notes describe the equipment in the context of underwater work near Venice, whose lagoon and naval defenses made diving technology strategically interesting.
The design should not be confused with modern scuba equipment. It did not use a compressed-air cylinder, regulator, or buoyancy-control device. Leonardo also proposed a method for dealing with waste inside the suit, showing that he considered practical problems as well as the basic idea of breathing underwater.
The concept belongs to Leonardo’s notebooks rather than to a documented successful deployment. It is therefore best described as a design for a diving suit, not as the invention of modern scuba diving.