Famous Inventors

W1: All right, class, so we've been talking about famous inventors this week. One of the most famous inventors of the Renaissance was Leonardo da Vinci. Who knows what else da Vinci was famous for? W2: Paintings! He did the Mona Lisa! W1: That's absolutely right. Da Vinci was the artist who painted the famous Mona Lisa. He also painted The Last Supper and was famous for architecture and sculptures and so many different art forms. In addition to all this, he was also a famous inventor. He drew sketches of airplanes 400 years before the first plane took flight! The thing was, though, that most of these inventions were all way before his time. So they didn't help people much during his time. Yes? M: What do you mean by "way before his time?" W1: Well he thought these things up, but the technology back then wasn't good enough actually to create any of these inventions. Anyway, some of his inventions were created. For example, da Vinci created the anemoscope. An anemoscope is a device that tells you which direction the wind is blowing. It also is supposed to tell you what direction the wind is going to change before it even does. W2: So does the anemoscope still exist? W1: No one really uses it anymore. But they did a long time ago.