The Codex Madrid I by Leonardo da Vinci provides the most comprehensive and most cohesive elaboration of the great Florentine on practical and theoretical mechanics. This manuscript offers much more than just random notes. Rather, it is the result of years of experiments and observations in the technical environment of Milan, especially in the years 1492 to 1495. Leonardo develops and revises previous designs, which are often associated with further improvements. On the other hand, the Codex is anything but a systematic treatise.

For a long time, this manuscript (Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, ms. 9937) had disappeared. It was not before around 1965 that it was rediscovered. We previously had only scattered records of Leonardo's studies on mechanics from his approximately 20 surviving notebooks. His most beautiful sketches that survived Francesco Melzi's death became quite often subjects of investigation. These leaves were bound to a large atlas-sized collective manuscript in the late 16th century which is now called Codex Atlanticus (Milan). Further studies on mechanics mixed with a variety of other matters, entered an equally impressive collection of manuscripts, acquired from Spanish sources by Thomas Howard, Lord Arundel at the beginning of the 17th Century (London, British Library, ms. Arundel 263).

None of these manuscripts offers more than Codex Madrid I a picture as complete of Leonardo's efforts on the basics of mechanics and a new understanding of engineering. To show this is a major concern of our project.

The Italian-American engineer and art historian Ladislao Reti published the Madrid manuscripts for the first time in 1974 in five volumes. Leonardo's texts were translated in five modern languages: English, Italian, Spanish, French and German.

This edition brought about a revival of studies of early modern mechanics and enhanced the traditional image of Leonardo's technical genius. Some of these studies are:

• 1974: The Unknown Leonardo published by Ladislao Reti

• 1989: The striking confrontation of some of Leonardo's designs to mathematically defined results of modern mechanics by the Austrian scholar of philosophy of science Herbert Maschat

• 2007: The inspiring comparison with Franz Reuleaux's (1829-1905), one of the founders of modern kinematics, theory of machine elements by the American professor of mechanics Francis C. Moon

• 2007: The impressive presentation of several selected designs by CAD models in Mario Taddei's Leonardo da Vinci's Robots