Da Vinci’s watermill wasn’t his only attempt to control the flow of water. One of his most ambitious projects was an attempt to construct a channel and a dam to divert the river Arno away from Pisa so that the city could no longer cut off Florentine trade. The plan was made in conjunction with another historically significant Florentine, Niccolo Machiavelli. Da Vinci for the project, designed not only the dam and channel, but also many machines intended to assist in construction. Unfortunately, as was so often the case of Leonardo, he was ahead of his time, and Florence simply did not have the resources to conduct a project on this scale. While theoretically feasible, it wasn’t economically feasible. While the project never came into fruition, the notion of controlling the flow of a river would live on past Leonardo, and would, eventually, succeed.

https://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/dgill/FinalProject/Leon...

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