Leonardo da Vinci's glider built in 2002

In 2002, engineers constructed a fixed-wing glider based on a 500-year-old sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, marking the first time the design had been tested in flight. The glider was built using only materials available in the 16th century, such as linen, bamboo, and leather, to stay as true to the original design as possible.

Project commissioned for a documentary

The project was commissioned by ITN Factual for a television documentary and aimed to recreate the design as accurately as possible without modern materials. This effort sought to explore the feasibility of Leonardo’s ideas with the technology of his time.

Testing before manned flight

Before any manned flight attempts, the glider was tested in a wind tunnel and on the bench of the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association. These tests confirmed that the full-scale glider was stable in pitch during normal flight regimes, unlike a smaller model that had previously shown instability.

Pilot tested the glider in the air

Judy Leden, a British pilot and triple world champion in hang gliding and paragliding, piloted the glider during captive flights on the High and Over hill in Sussex in October and December 2002. These flights confirmed the stability observed during ground tests and made Leden the test pilot of Leonardo da Vinci for the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

Parallel project by BBC and University of Liverpool

A parallel project supported by the BBC and presented by Alan Yentob resulted in another replica of Leonardo's glider, which was tested in a wind tunnel and on a simulator at the University of Liverpool. This glider was successfully flown in Wiltshire in November 2002 by pilot Robbie Whittall, further confirming the viability of Leonardo’s design.

Leonardo's design proved to be functional

Leonardo's fixed-wing glider, long considered an archival curiosity, proved that it could indeed fly. This demonstrated the accuracy of his intuitions and showed that his design was not just a decorative mechanism but a real device intended to transport a pilot into the air, a concept realized only five centuries later.