Among his many ideas, the Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci also had that of a three-wheeled device that could move by itself: this was therefore a progenitor of our modern motor car. It had a spring mechanism design to astonish the powerful figures of the time at court festivals, and was moved by a pair of spiral springs, very similar to those used on toy cars at the beginning of the Twentieth century. It was also fitted with a rudimentary differential, which was supposed to make it possible to steer it. This is what we might assume from the sketches on sheet 812r of the Atlantic Code (the largest collection of drawings and writings by the great master, conserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan), which deceived scholars for a long time. The enigma was solved when, in recent years, they were able to understand that the leaf springs visible at the bottom of Leonardo’s drawing do not constitute the engine, as it was long believed, but serve to adjust the movement, and propulsion is created by a pair of spiral springs contained in drums under the cart.
