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Manuscript Notebook MS B

Leonardo da Vinci

One of Leonardo da Vinci's own notebooks, written in his distinctive mirror script with sketches of machines and diagrams.

This page is in Leonardo's own handwriting, directly showing his working notes and sketches.

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Scan of a page from a Leonardo da Vinci manuscript notebook: mirror-writing handwritten notes in brown ink, a geometric diagram of a triangle and rectangle at top, and a sketch of a catapult or siege engine with a flame at lower right.
Leonardo da Vinci, page from Manuscript Notebook MS B. Wellcome Collection, United Kingdom.

About this source

What it is

This is a page from one of Leonardo da Vinci's personal notebooks, known as MS B. It is written in his own hand, using his famous mirror-writing, and is now held by the Wellcome Collection.

The page mixes handwritten notes with a geometric diagram and a sketch of a siege engine, showing how Leonardo combined writing and drawing when he worked out an idea.

Why it matters

Leonardo filled many notebooks like this with observations, inventions and questions about the world. They are one of the best windows historians have into how a Renaissance thinker actually worked, testing ideas on paper before anything was built.

Look closer

  • Why might Leonardo have written in mirror script rather than normal handwriting?
  • What does mixing diagrams, sketches and text on one page tell you about how he thought?
  • What questions does this page leave unanswered about how the machine was meant to work?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Leonardo da Vinci on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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