MASTERY: Da Vinci's Secret to Inventing the Future

Could you “see” the possibility of air travel if birds and butterflies were the only objects flying in the skies? Imagine how Leonardo da Vinci might have thought that stuff up— hundreds of years ahead of his time.

Think about the world back before the Internet, before TV, before phones, before electricity: it was very difficult to get information. There were books, but most people were illiterate. Schooling didn't become public and universal until the 1800s in the United States, and much later elsewhere.

So how could Leonardo da Vinci, a self-taught man who lived during the 15th and early 16th centuries, discover, design and invent innovations from a model for the airplane, to a submarine, to bridges whose design are currently being built around the world?

Charley says it's because she ended up teaching Leonardo—about gravity, the internet, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity!

But history shows that the Maestro's real secret was his obsession to master—through observation, experimentation, and discovery—his understanding of the world all around him.

However it happened, it seems without question that da Vinci was bent on inventing the future. How he went about it—and how it has all since come into being— is, perhaps, the ultimate mystery.

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