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Da Vinci invented plastics too

da Vinci

The many talents of Leonardo da Vinci (Image: NASA)

Leonardo da Vinci not only anticipated the aeroplane, the life jacket, the intercom and the robot, he created the first natural plastic, according to an Italian scholar.

Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci where the artist was born, found Leonardo's recipe for artificial materials in several pages of drawings and notes.

Vezzosi studied notes in the da Vinci's Arundel Codex (housed in the British Library in London), Forster Codex (in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum), the Atlantic Codex (kept in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan, Italy) and in manuscripts in France.

By reading da Vinci's characteristic "mirror image" handwriting, which runs from right to left, Vezzosi learned of Leonardo's plastic mixture.

"He combined colours with animal or vegetable glues, sometimes adding organic fibres," Vezzosi said.

The Renaissance master obtained effects similar to plastic and unbreakable glass by "clothing with colours" the leaves of cabbage, lettuce, paper and ox tripe.

The materials he coated ranged from "the back of the stomach of a heifer or a ox", "the leaves of wrinkle lettuce", "papers and little canes used as goose pens" and a "large Milanese wrinkled leaf of cabbage, which should be collected in December or January".

Vezzosi followed Leonardo's instructions and applied colours mixed with vegetable or animal glues. He then painted the materials described by Leonardo with many layers. As the first material dried, he removed it and obtained a material similar to bakelite, a plastic from the early 1900s.

"You have to be patient and wait until each layer of colour dries completely. We used pigments similar to those applied by Leonardo. They ranged from traditional oil paint to any kind of organic materials," Vezzosi said.

The successful reproduction of Leonardo's natural polychrome plastic proved that the Florentine genius created the first man-made plastic long before Alexander Parkes invented parkesine (an organic material derived from cellulose) in 1862 and Leo Hendrik Baekeland's bakelite in 1909.

"Leonardo created a material somewhere between natural and chemical plastic. Indeed, he had already synthesised a chemical very similar to acetone. But in his experiments he always used non-toxic, organic substances," Vezzosi said.

Leonardo's polychrome mixtures were so similar to phenolic resin that they could be used to create knife handles, salt cellars, containers and necklaces. His monochrome mixtures could be used to create cups or vases that "once thrown on the floor don't break".

Professor Alessandro Bagno, from the University of Padova's department of organic chemistry, said it was interesting that da Vinci used layers to create unbreakable objects.

"In the case of oil painting, for example, linseed oil is the binding agent. This oil polymerises slowly on contact with the air, forming a resistant, waterproof polymer similar to linoleum.

"This shows once again Leonardo's great innovative input, although obviously it doesn't add anything to our knowledge nowadays."

Tags: archaeology, chemistry