Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
(
)
Date: May 03, 2019 12:12AM
Leonardo Da Vinci died at age 67 in France on May 2, 1519. IMHO, His passing was the end of the initial phase of the Italian Renaissance. Spain was beginning to colonize the Americas, printing was become common (started in mid 1400s). Luther had posted his 95 Theses two years earlier, in 1517. After Michelangelo and Leonardo left Florence, it was no longer the center of European culture, like it had been for the previous century and then some.
Leonardo left drawings of a human powered flying machine. It was never built, and just as well. The human body can't generate enough power to keep the weight of a person and the machine in the air. With very high tech materials and engineering, it is just possible for a person to fly in ground effect if the pilot/power source is in really good shape and skinny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics)
A Canadian artist and engineer decided to make a model based on Da Vinci's drawings, back in the 1990s, iirc. The engineer, Bob May, did a couple of full-size realizations of the model. One is at a museum in Boston. The other is in....wait for it...Ogden, Utah.
The Weber County Library System asked Mr May if he would be interested in doing a full scale model as an art installation at a new library they were building. He said sure. It is now hanging from the ceiling of the Pleasant Valley branch in Washington Terrace, south Ogden (5568 Adams Ave). If you are at all interested in that sort of thing, it is worth a drive if you are anywhere close. Like I said, I believe there are only two of these suckers in the world! It's about a 40 minute drive from downtown SLC.
I found very little on the internet WRT the flying machine model in Ogden. There used to be a youtube video about crating the model up and shipping it to Utah, but that seems to be gone. Here is a brief CTV news story about the creation of the model. Bob May initially did a small model kit (42” wingspan, so as kit models go, pretty large).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj6kMZBrUq4The kit company appears to be out of business. The pages on its website to buy kits are missing. I think they sold their existing inventory and shut up shop. Here are a few pages about the kit:
http://www.davincistore.com/T_wwdvd.html Builder’s journal
http://www.davincistore.com/MR_FMReview.pdf Review of the kit/model
http://www.davincistore.com/H_kits.html History of the kits
A blurb on the Weber County library branch. It doesn’t even mention the model. :(
https://www.weberpl.lib.ut.us/visit/visit-pleasant-valley-branch