Guido da Vigevano

Who was Guido da Vigevano?

Guido da Vigevano was an Italian physician and inventor. He is notable for his sketchbook Texaurus regis Francie which depicts a number of technological items and ingenious devices, allowing modern scholarship an invaluable insight into the state of medieval technology. Although still attached in style and spirit to the Middle Ages, Guido da Vigevano can be regarded as a distant forerunner of later Renaissance artist-engineers like Taccola, Francesco di Giorgio and Leonardo da Vinci.

Guido da Vigevano was personal physician of queen Joan I of Navarre. For an envisaged crusade, he drew sketches of armoured chariots, wind-propelled carriages and siege engines. He was also one of the first to add drawings of organs to his anatomical descriptions. His sketches were typically medieval in that they lack perspectivity, invented only at the beginning of the Renaissance by Brunelleschi.

Guido created a vehicle that moved using a windmill that relayed force to gear and then to the wheels. Some consider this machine to be first car in history, or at least a forerunner.