ABSTRACT
Leonardo da Vinci is known, from surviving manuscript notes of his, to have carried out experimental investigations on the behaviour of materials under stress. He was probably the first to advance beyond the merely rule-of-thumb treatment of structural problems adopted by ancient and mediaeval builders. Leonardo recognized that the load which can be supported by an upright pillar consisting of a compact bundle of shafts is many times greater than the total of the loads which each of several shafts could support separately. In England, following experiments, like those of Galileo Galilei, on the tenacity of metal wires, the Royal Society in February 1664 determined “to try the strength of several kinds of wood, as to bending, toughness”, and placed Hooke in charge of the experiments. In ancient Eastern and Greek architecture little attempt was made to proportion the diameter of columns to their height and load.
