Do You Know the Scientific Advancements of the 1400s?

Linear perspective utilizes a horizon line and a vanishing point to create a 3D effect on a flat surface, giving the illusion of spatial depth. The technique is based on mathematical laws of linear perspective that were known in antiquity but lost during Europe's Middle Ages. It was formalized as a genuine artistic technique when two Italian architects documented its use in 1435.

Based on “De Architectura,” a building guide by Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Vitruvian Man is not just a grand artwork but a mathematical wonder. Placed in a square inscribed within a circle and displaying four arms and legs, the figure can strike 16 poses simultaneously. Its combination of mathematics, philosophy, and art makes the Vitruvian Man an icon of the Renaissance.

Though mathematicians in the Arab world had been using Arabic numerals since at least the 7th century CE, it wasn’t until the advent of the printing press that Roman numerals — the number system most commonly used in Europe — was finally abandoned for this new, compact system. With wood-block printing presses, it was much easier to use the simpler Arabic numerals than the cumbersome Roman ones.

In 1453, the city of Constantinople and the last vestiges of the Roman Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks. Fleeing from these invaders, Byzantine scholars traveled west and brought with them preserved texts of ancient Greek philosophers. Many ancient Greek sources were also preserved by Islamic scientists during the Islamic Golden Age (622 CE - 1258 CE).

Not much is known about who made the very first harpsichord, but it’s believed the instrument was created in the early 1400s in Italy. Unlike a piano, the strings on a harpsichord are plucked instead of hammered, creating a sound that’s best described as “Elizabethan.” It would take a few more centuries for the modern piano to be invented around 1700, by the Italian harpsichord-maker Bartolomeo Cristofori.

Martin Behaim’s timing couldn’t be better. Just as the European Age of Exploration was getting underway in 1492, the German textile merchant and cartographer created the Erdapfel (meaning “Earth Apple”), the world’s oldest-surviving globe. Of course, there were a few notable errors, as the Americas had not yet been discovered by Europeans.

In 1088, the first university opened its doors in Bologna in modern-day Italy, and others soon followed. It was in these universities that a new form of humanism, derived from ancient Greek texts, took hold. Soon, other city-states such as Venice and, especially, Florence, became intellectual and artistic powerhouses in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Leonardo da Vinci is the original “Renaissance man.” A polymath known best for his world-famous paintings, such as the “Mona Lisa” and “Last Supper,” Da Vinici was also a scientist, engineer, and architect. In the late 1400s, the genius of Florence began envisioning “flying machines,” some of the first documented attempts at understanding human flight.

In 1675, Isaac Newton wrote a letter regarding his breakthrough discoveries, saying “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Those giants would have likely included Italian painter and polymath Leonardo da Vinci, Polish astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus, and German inventor Johannes Gutenberg, who all lived and worked during the 15th century.

If there is one machine that made the cultural Renaissance and Scientific Revolution in Europe possible, it was Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. Before this engineering marvel, books were painstaking transcribed, severely limiting the spread of knowledge. The printing press changed all that, flooding Europe and the rest of the world with new ideas.