Engineers re-created one of Leonardo’s experiments with a modern apparatus and found he produced a value for the gravitational constant, G, to around 97 percent accuracy. What makes this finding even more astonishing is that Leonardo achieved this without a means of accurate timekeeping and without the benefit of calculus, which Newton invented only around 150 years after Leonardo’s death.
What a cool read. I wonder how much knowledge he may have acquired that he was unable to pass on to the next generation because there was simply too much. Seems like his notebooks were a bit inscrutable.