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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Da Vinci's "Car" & JPL

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ … .html]Read me

*Just now saw a news story on ABC Nightly News.  Engineers and etc. trying to figure out what Leonardo da Vinci had in mind with a particularly mysterious drawing.  IBM (?) commissioned a model be made of it in the early 1950s; it didn't work out as they'd hoped.

Enter the Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

With the help of engineers at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the project's backers created a digital model by computer-aided design. Then a retired Tuscan artisan was drafted in to build the re-creation, which was successfully road-tested in Florence.

The ABC TV reporter likened it to a "wind-up toy the size of a piano," but pointed out that it had a "computer" as well, which would allow it to travel on a pre-planned course.  The reporter also mentioned the JPL in connection with our MERs.  :up:

Couldn't find an online article at abc.com, but this should do.

They showed it rolling across the room after it'd been "set."  Moved surprisingly quickly.

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

John Creighton

Member

From: Nova Scotia, Canada

Registered: 2001-09-04

Posts: 2,401

Website

Re: Da Vinci's "Car" & JPL

Yeah, it shoulder pretty cool. I have been hearing a lot about Leonardo Da Vinci  lately. I wonder if it has anything to do with the book Da Vinci's  code. It might be a good fiction and even if it is not I should learn something about his paintings. I think the book is suppose to be fairly historically accurate and only the interpretations are fictional.

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Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Da Vinci's "Car" & JPL

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s … 9053701]Da Vinci -working- inventions (models) on display in  Vienna

*Would be interesting to see. 

As for the "Mona Lisa"...blah.  Never have understood what's supposedly oh-so-compelling about that painting. 

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

dicktice

Member

From: Nova Scotia, Canada

Registered: 2002-11-01

Posts: 1,764

Re: Da Vinci's "Car" & JPL

Did you see the movie: "Ever After?" There's a nice scene where Da Vinci is robbed of the Mona Lisa canvas, rolled up. It's surpriosingly small, for such an influential painting. As for being oh-so-compelling, Cindy, it's a guy thing.

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Da Vinci's "Car" & JPL

Did you see the movie: "Ever After?"

*Um...no, I don't think so.  There is one movie of a same or similar name starring Angelica Huston.  Am not sure that's the movie you have in mind.

There's a nice scene where Da Vinci is robbed of the Mona Lisa canvas, rolled up. It's surpriosingly small, for such an influential painting.

Hmmmmm.

As for being oh-so-compelling, Cindy, it's a guy thing.

Okay, I'll take your word for it.  But now I'm thinking of another forum I participate in (totally unrelated to space/astronomy stuff) and most of the gals there are crazy for David Selby (1960s daytime television actor).  I don't know what they see in him, but to each their own of course. 

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)