Quantum AI Just Recreated a Device Found in Da Vinci’s Lost Sketches
Leonardo da Vinci’s Machine That Shouldn’t Exist – But Came Back to Life After 500 Years
Leonardo da Vinci once wrote in his notes:
“The great bird will take its first flight from the top of Monte Ceceri, astonishing the world, making its name remembered in every book, and granting eternal glory to the place where it was born.”
He was speaking of his dream of flight. But now, 500 years later, another sketch — thought to be long dormant — has been brought back to life. And the most shocking part is: it wasn’t restored by humans, but by a Quantum Artificial Intelligence.
And what the AI found hidden within that drawing… left modern engineers speechless.
From a Forgotten Sketch…
Researchers fed one of Leonardo’s long-lost diagrams into a Quantum AI. Initially, they expected it to reconstruct a simple mechanical calculator. What emerged instead was a mechanical “brain.”
The design came from the Codices Madrid — rediscovered in Spain’s National Library in 1967 — describing a mechanical calculator Leonardo conceived around 1502. The device contained 13 interlinked gears capable of carrying values from one gear to the next — essentially following the same principles as later mechanical adding machines.
But here’s the unusual part: the mechanism Leonardo drew contained logic far ahead of the 16th century’s technical capabilities.
…to a “Thinking” Machine
The Quantum AI didn’t just read the sketch. It analyzed high-resolution images, decoded Leonardo’s mirrored handwriting, identified each mechanical detail, and then reconstructed the entire structure in 3D. From this, the AI 3D-printed and assembled a physical model based on its analysis.
When tested, the prototype worked exactly as expected — turn the crank, the gears spin, perform additions, and every 10 turns, the next gear advances by one unit. But unexpectedly: the machine optimized its own operation.
The AI noticed that under different loads, the gears seemed to “choose” smoother motion paths, reducing friction and increasing efficiency — behaving almost like a system learning from experience.
Hidden Drawing and a Fibonacci Spiral
The AI went further. Using advanced spectral imaging — similar to the methods the British Museum uses to detect hidden paintings beneath old layers of ink — it discovered faint pencil marks invisible to the human eye.
Overlaying these marks onto the main sketch revealed a perfect Fibonacci spiral, with the gears positioned according to the golden ratio.
This motif is common in Leonardo’s art and studies of nature (shells, flowers, galaxies…), but hiding it in a mechanical design was something no one had ever suspected.
More Than a Calculator – Possibly a Star Map
Continuing its simulations, the AI experimented with alternate gear configurations. Some rotation ratios matched the distances of celestial bodies used by 16th-century navigators.
In one specific configuration, the 13th gear completed a full rotation in exactly 29.5 days — the lunar cycle. This effectively transformed the device into a mechanical star map or navigational tool for long voyages — akin to the ancient Antikythera Mechanism, but with Leonardo’s unique touch.
Leonardo Left… Himself in the Machine
The AI detected a faint wave-like watermark pattern across the entire drawing. When its geometry was analyzed, the proportions matched perfectly with the Vitruvian Man — Leonardo’s famous depiction of ideal human proportions.
In other words, Leonardo signed his work with his own body, hidden in plain sight for centuries.
A “Mechanical Brain”
Running the machine repeatedly, the AI observed it gradually selecting the most efficient pathways for transferring force — akin to how the human brain strengthens neural connections through repetition.
Its structure allowed output to be fed back as input — creating a computational loop, much like a basic programming algorithm. In effect, Leonardo had drawn the principle of a programmable computer — 300 years before Charles Babbage.
The Final Secret: A Skeleton in the Gears
Comparing the machine’s structure to anatomical data, the AI found that the arrangement of the gears mirrored the skeletal structure of a human hand — with joints and movements corresponding to metacarpal bones and fingers.
This aligns with Leonardo’s meticulous anatomical studies of the hand. The machine’s crank wasn’t just a crank — it could have been an interface designed to match the natural motion of the human wrist, making the device an extension of the body itself.
Conclusion: Was Leonardo the First Programmer?
After all its analysis, the AI concluded: this was not simply an adding machine, but a looping computational system — with branching conditions, self-optimizing performance, and embedded codes in geometry, astronomy, and anatomy.
Leonardo had fused art, science, engineering, and mathematics… to design a device embodying the principles of mechanical artificial intelligence — five centuries before the birth of the computer.
