Leonardo da Vinci's Loom

Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant artist, inventor, and all-around scientist. While you may be familiar with the Mona Lisa or his designs for a helicopter prototype, you might now know about his loom. Da Vinci once said of looms in general, “This is second to the printing of letters and just as useful. It is worked by men, gives larger profits, and it is a beautiful and clever invention.” His admiration of the loom led him to design a loom of his own that was completely automatic. While Leonardo never actually built the loom to test it, fortunately for us the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnolgia “Leonardo da Vinci” in Milan, Italy, did build a loom from his designs and found that it indeed worked just as designed.