Week 17 History Essay

           The four inventions and inventors I learned about this week are the mariner’s astrolabe, double-entry bookkeeping, Luca Pacioli, and Leonardo Da Vinci. First, I will talk about the mariner’s astrolabe. The mariner’s astrolabe is a two-handed instrument used to read angles above the horizon. It was invented by the Portuguese and lasted 300 years. It helped sailors to navigate and tell time and helped them fix sailing problems from the motion of the ocean and wind. Today sailors used other ways of navigating the oceans. Next, I learned about double-entry bookkeeping, which was invented by Luca Pacioli. It was a way of record-keeping for businesses to keep everything balanced and helped protect businesses from theft from their employees. In the next lesson, I learned that Luca Pacioi was an Italian author who wrote books on math, geometry, and practical business. He was very good friends with Leonardo Da Vinci, who helped make one of his books popular by doing the illustration for him. The last lesson this week was about Leonardo Da Vinci, who was a famous artist and painted some of the most famous paintings in the world, like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He was the son of a rich, government official and had 12 siblings. He learned math and geometry as a child, which is what made his art so amazing. I liked learning about Leonardo Da Vinci the most this week, because I love art and I love his paintings.