Ms. B. - "Mode of forcefully launching water onto an army and bridges and walls of a city. For Lucca", c. 1487. Here Leonardo returns to the idea of flooding the city of Lucca that Machiavelli, in his Historie fiorentine, attributes to Brunelleschi (with a disastrous outcome). He elaborates the project for z dam on a canal having various "sluice gates" to be opened simultaneously, "at the firing of a musket shot" to create an "impetuous force".
© Alessandro Vezzosi
Last update 26/feb/2008