The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete


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The only notes on musical matters are those given as Nos. 1129  
and 1130, which explain certain arrangements in instruments.  
The ship's logs of Vitruvius, of Alberti and of Leonardo  
1
113.  
ON MOVEMENTS;--TO KNOW HOW MUCH A SHIP ADVANCES IN AN HOUR.  
The ancients used various devices to ascertain the distance gone by  
a ship each hour, among which Vitruvius [Footnote 6: See VITRUVIUS,  
De Architectura lib. X. C. 14 (p. 264 in the edition of Rose and  
Muller- Strubing). The German edition published at Bale in 1543 has,  
on fol. 596, an illustration of the contrivance, as described by  
Vitruvius.] gives one in his work on Architecture which is just as  
fallacious as all the others; and this is a mill wheel which touches  
the waves of the sea at one end and in each complete revolution  
describes a straight line which represents the circumference of the  
wheel extended to a straightness. But this invention is of no worth  
excepting on the smooth and motionless surface of lakes. But if the  
water moves together with the ship at an equal rate, then the wheel  
remains motionless; and if the motion of the water is more or less  
rapid than that of the ship, then neither has the wheel the same  
motion as the ship so that this invention is of but little use.  
There is another method tried by experiment with a known distance  
between one island and another; and this is done by a board or under  
897  


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