Da Vinci Bridge Design Holds Up Even After 500 Years, MIT Proves

Researchers at MIT have proven that Leonardo da Vinci knew what he was doing when he came up with a novel bridge design that would connect Istanbul with its neighbor city Galata. At the time, it would’ve been the world’s longest bridge, with an unprecedented single span of 790 feet — constructed without wood planks or even mortar joints. But, unfortunately, it was only recently put to the test since the design was rejected by Sultan Bayezid II in 1502 A.D. CNET reports: “It was time-consuming, but 3D printing allowed us to accurately recreate this very complex geometry,” MIT graduate student Karly Bast said in a release on Thursday. Bast worked with a team of engineering academics to finally bring to life a faithful 1-to-500 scale model of da Vinci’s famously rejected bridge design, putting the Renaissance man’s long-questioned geometry to the test by slicing the complex shapes into 126 individual blocks, then assembling them with only the force of gravity. The group, which presented its work this week in Barcelona, relied on the sketches and descriptions found in da Vinci’s letter bidding for the job, along with their own analysis of the era’s construction methods. The structure is held together only by compression — the MIT team wanted to show that the forces were all being transferred within the structure, said Bast. “When we put it in, we had to squeeze it in.” Bast said she had her doubts, but when she put the keystone in, she realized it was going to work. When the group took the scaffolding out, the bridge stayed up. “It’s the power of geometry,” she said.