Balances and weights, with prophecies and a note on flight
Suspended-beam schemes distributing a weight, beside riddling prophecies
The sheet mixes mechanics with literary invention. Several schemes of balances and suspended rods work out how a single weight is shared among lettered points, one double beam carrying the load 'all in c, 5/8 in m and 1/4 in r'. At the top stand two of Leonardo's riddling prophecies, on snakes carried by storks and on bombards issuing from the mould, and a note at the lower right places the man in a flying machine a little above its centre of gravity. A semicircular construction at the foot belongs to the geometrical work. Further faint writing accompanies the diagrams.
On this page
Two prophecies: snakes carried by storks; bombards from the mould
In the manner of his prophecies, Leonardo announces that at the greatest height of the air very long serpents will be seen fighting with birds, the snakes carried by storks. A second riddle, of the bombards that issue from the pit and the mould, foretells a thing rising from underground whose terrifying cry stuns bystanders and whose breath kills men and ruins cities and castles.
A double suspended beam distributing a weight
For a double beam suspended at r, m and c, the note records how the load is apportioned: the weight is entirely in c, five-eighths in m and one quarter in r. It is one of several small balance schemes tabulating the share of a weight at each point.
A system of suspended rods bearing the weight n
In a system of suspended rods t f, r, m, h g and n, the weight n is said to weigh entirely in f, entirely in m, entirely in g h and entirely in r t. A companion scheme states that the weight n is three times greater in m.
The airman relative to the flying machine's centre of gravity
A note above the small figure of a man states that the man in the bird stands at the pole a little higher than the centre of its gravity. It links the pilot's placement to the balance of the flying machine.