Florence, Italy’s Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, a.k.a., The Duomo, dates back to the 15th century. Construction of the massive church took fifteen years. Its architect and designer, Filippo Brunelleschi, invented a number of specialized machines to support the construction effort. Without Brunelleschi’s machines, the Duomo might date back to the 16th century instead of the 15th.
Quick Recap
In the 15th century, the Florentine city council wanted to build a magnificent domed church that would show off the city’s wealth and prestige. (See more here).
The desired dome would be a massive structure – so massive that the city’s designers weren’t able to come up with an architecturally sound design. They held a competition to find someone who could get the job done. Just one entrant, Filippo Brunelleschi, convinced them that he was up to the task.
The magnitude of the project was daunting. Thousands of pounds of stone, brick, and marble had to be raised 200 feet up to where the base of the dome would start. Just getting the materials to the job site presented a challenge.
Il Badalone
Gigantic pieces of marble had to be brought from Carrara, about 100 miles away. To speed things up, Brunelleschi designed a barge that would be loaded with marble and pulled up the Arno river. It was nicknamed “Il Badalone” – The Monster.
For the novel design of Il Badalone, Brunelleschi received what may have been the first patent ever issued. Once again, 15th-century florentines showed themselves to be on the ball.
Patents provided a way to incentivize people to think of ways to make the world a better place. With possession of a patent, people could potentially profit from a novel idea.
Unfortunately, on its first trip up the Arno, the guys in Carrara loaded up Il Badalone with too much marble. Il Badalone sank on its first trip. They never built another one.
A Hoisting Machine
Brunelleschi had better luck with machines designed to handle stone after it had arrived at the job site. Back in 1420, there was no easy way to hoist heavy pieces of marble 200 feet up to the top of a building. Brunelleschi invented a machine to do the job.
A pair of oxen powered the hoisting machine. When the oxen walked away from the machine, a system of axles and gears converted the horizontal pulling force to a vertical force capable of lifting very heavy objects. By changing gear ratios, they could lift heavy loads slowly or lighter loads more quickly.
Workers used a different machine, positioned at the base of the emerging dome, to move heavy stones once they had been delivered. It resembled cranes we see today in any big city.
All of Brunelleschi’s machines had one thing in common: after completion of the Duomo, no one ever used them again. And no other machines like them would be built until decades later.
Maybe Filippo Brunelleschi was so far ahead of his time, if he wasn’t there to personally show people how to use his machines, they just wouldn’t get it.
Finalmente!
There was one guy who got it, though. He was born in 1452, six years after Brunelleschi died, in a small town not that far from Florence. Can you guess who it was? It was the one and only Leonardo da Vinci.
Twenty years later, young Leonardo made drawings of Brunelleschi’s machines. I think that would have made Filippo Brunelleschi pretty happy, eh? I like to think he was up in heaven saying, “Finalmente! Qualcuno lo capisce!” (Finally! Someone gets it!)
Leonardo became famous as an artist and an inventor. He made drawings of his inventions and saved them in notebooks. Many years later, historians started researching his work and writing about him.
When they discovered those cool drawings of machines, they must have said something like, “Man, Leonardo invented some awesome hoisting machines and cranes and stuff.”
But guess what? They weren’t Leonardo’s inventions. The researchers were looking at young Leonardo’s drawings of Brunelleschi’s machines!
Leonardo never tried to take credit for Brunelleschi’s work. He just thought it was neat. And when Leonardo thought something was pretty neat, he usually drew a picture of it.
Eventually some clever historians put two and two together and figured out what was what. Interesting, eh?
To be continued…
