The Filippo Brunelleschi: A Genius

In 1418, Florence, Italy had a problem. Their beautiful cathedral, built to be the crowning jewel of the city, couldn’t be finished. In fact, it hadn’t been finished for decades. An enormous hole was in the roof where the dome should have been. Nobody could figure out how to finish a dome almost 150 feet across and starting almost 180 feet above the ground. To complicate matters, the dome wasn’t a circle, but an octagon. And so the cathedral sat, until in 1418, a contest was announced asking for ingenious solutions to the design problem. Fame, glory, and 200 florins would be awarded to the man who could finish the dome. Many came forward and threw their hats into the ring. One artisan suggested using a kind of volcanic rock in order

He proclaimed that he would build not one dome, but two domes, one inside the other, and furthermore, do so without need of expensive scaffolding. Everyone thought he was crazy, except for the fact that everyone knew he was a genius. Brunelleschi had proven brilliant during his apprenticeship, mastering all the differing facets of goldsmithing and artistry. He moved on to master gears and weights and levers. Brunelleschi might have been the first to build an alarm clock. And Brunelleschi had just returned from several years analyzing architecture in Rome. It took two years, but the contest was finally decided and Brunelleschi’s design was

Brunelleschi had to invent a contraption that could lift very heavy materials 180 feet off the ground. He was able to construct a massive pulley system powered by oxen and using a specially made rope that weighed over a thousand pounds. He also invented a type of crane that could move those materials from side to side once they were hoisted to the right height. Brunelleschi’s innovations were so ground breaking that other nearby inventors were fascinated, including Leonardo da Vinci, who drew sketches of how Brunelleschi’s contraptions were