Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol1-1 > Great european innovators II

Leonardo da Vinci
An early helicopter and tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull, and a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born in 1452 and is credited with being a polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. He was born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence and is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull, and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics and hydrodynamics.

In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo’s vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On 17 May 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo’s bridge to span the Golden Horn.

For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter and a light hang glider. Most were impractical, like his aerial screw helicopter design that could not provide lift. However, the hang glider has been successfully constructed and demonstrated.

László József Bíró
The modern ballpoint pen

Born in 1899, László József Bíró was the inventor of the modern ballpoint pen. He was born in Budapest, Austria- Hungary. While working as a journalist in Hungary, he noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. He tried using the same ink in a fountain pen, but found that it would not flow into the tip, as it was too viscous. Working with his brother Georg, a chemist, he developed a new tip consisting of a ball that was free to turn in a socket, and as it turned it would pick up ink from a cartridge and then roll to deposit it on the paper. He presented the first production of the ball pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931 and patented the invention in Paris in 1938.

In 1943, the brothers moved to Argentina and filed another patent, and formed Biro Pens of Argentina. This new design was licensed by the British, who found the ballpoint pens worked much better than fountain pens at high altitude and so produced them for the Royal Air Force.

In 1950, Marcel Bich bought the patent for the pen, which soon became the main product of his Bic company.

Today, a ballpoint pen is still widely referred to as a “biro” in many English-speaking countries, including the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, although the word is a registered trademark.