The Codex Atlanticus contains Leonardo da Vinci’s famous parachute and flying-machine sketches. It is the largest single collection of his surviving drawings and notes.
The manuscript covers engineering, anatomy, mathematics, geometry, weapons, and architecture. Its pages were assembled from Leonardo’s loose papers after his death, so the codex is a collection rather than one notebook written in a single continuous sequence. The name refers to the large atlas-sized format of its pages, not to the Atlantic Ocean.
The Codex Atlanticus is preserved at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. It includes studies for an ornithopter, a pyramidal parachute, military machines, pumps, and many mechanical devices. Leonardo’s mirror writing and rapid changes between subjects can make the pages difficult to interpret, but the drawings reveal how closely he connected scientific observation with engineering design.