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There is a drawing of a bicycle in one of Leonarda DaVinci‘s sketchbooks– except it wasn’t drawn by DaVinci, and dates long after his death, so we can’t say the old master invented the bicycle. We can, however, wonder what it would have looked like if he did– and so did the [How To Make Everything] YouTube channel. As you might expect, they investigated the question of a Renaissance Bicycle in the best possible way: they built one.
In some ways the device looks like the first, primitive hobby-horse proto-bicycle of the early 19th century, which is not without reason. From the renaissance to the dawn of the industrial era, there wasn’t a huge change in how europeans worked with wood, and in both eras wood is the obvious choice. Where this bike differs from [Karl Drais]’s invention is that it has both pedals and brakes– both of them using drawings from DaVinci’s sketchbook.
You might be surprised to learn that ball-bearings are period-appropriate, and weren’t even invented by DaVinci. The drum brake, on the other hand, is right out of the Old Master’s notes: a steel band wraps around a drum on the rear break, and is tighened by a lever. With iron rims, no brake would stop on a dime, and this probably works as well as anything while being quite simple to make.
