Beam bending: Was Leonardo right? A brief historical remark

Abstract Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is well known for his paintings and sculptures and also for his inventions in the fields of architecture and civil and mechanical engineering. He is less known for his contributions in solid mechanics. Despite quite philosophical reflections on the notion of force and other phenomena, he treated beam bending intensively. In this contribution, I intend to show to what extent Leonardo had an idea of the correct theory of beam bending.