Leonard of Quirm
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| Characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series |
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| Character details | |
| Full name: | Leonard of Quirm |
| Description: | Eccentric genius |
| Associations: | Havelock Vetinari |
| Location: | Quirm, Ankh-Morpork |
| Story appearances | |
| First seen: | Wyrd Sisters (mentioned) Men At Arms (appearance) |
| Also in: | Jingo, The Fifth Elephant The Last Hero |
| Other details | |
| Notes: | Writes backwards |
Leonard of Quirm is a fictional character in the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. He is a pastiche on the popular perception of Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonard is a man of indeterminate age (he is described as "one of those people who start looking venerable at thirty, and proceed to look that when they got to ninety"). Originally from Quirm, he moved to Ankh-Morpork some time ago and is currently a permanent "guest" of the Patrician. Before this he was a member of nearly every craftsman's Guild in the city, most commonly being kicked out for getting impossibly high marks on examinations or correcting the questions.
Like his counterpart, he is a great painter, being known for such paintings as Woman Holding Ferret and the Mona Ogg. (Leonardo's Lady with Ermine and Mona Lisa.) Also like his counterpart, he is left-handed and writes things backwards (ie. "ENNOGEHT"—"The Gonne"—in Men At Arms).
He is also a brilliant engineer. Like the early Leonardo he has designed a great number of war machines, and like the later Leonardo he holds war to be the worst of human activities. It has been noted, however, that the sketches which he makes of the devices he imagines variously show ". . . numbered parts and a list of instructions . . . " or ". . . practically include glue and transfers". Still others have noted that the sketches deal with the swift removal of inconveniently placed mountains, or show dying sailors leaping from burning ships into a boiling sea.
Despite this, Leonard views all his martial designs as intellectual exercises, and refuses to believe anyone would be mad enough to make them. His magnum opus in this department was an invention mentioned in The Fifth Elephant, which was described as a weapon of such destructive power, it would render war meaningless, as no one would ever dare use it. (a claim made by Alfred Nobel about dynamite; it was not fulfilled until the threat of mutual assured destruction by a nuclear holocaust much later) It is this naïveté that has led to his de facto imprisonment by the Patrician, lest someone other than him make use of the man's genius. But as long as he has paper to sketch on, and can watch the birds, Leonard barely notices his imprisonment. In fact, he has voluntarily returned to it, believing the world outside to be full of madmen. The hallway leading to his 'cell' is full of deadly, complicated traps, which he himself designed.
He has also designed many less dangerous devices, including a submarine (The Going Under The Water Safely Device), an Espresso machine (The Very Fast Coffee Machine) and a coding machine (the Engine for the Neutralizing of Information by the Generation of Miasmic Alphabets, see Enigma machine). His genius doesn't quite extend to names. He also finds it impossible to focus on anything. Or rather, he's focused on everything, all the time (see Attention Deficit Disorder). Many of his inventions started out as something completely different, before his mind shifted tracks half way through. (The Patrician often speculates on the fate of mankind should Leonard manage to keep his mind on one subject for any length of time.)
Again, like Leonardo, one of his greatest ambitions has been to build a working flying machine, something he achieves in The Last Hero.
It is worth noting that, although his name is Leonard "of Quirm", he is referred to as 'da Quirm' when his first name is unstated.
[edit] Inventions
- A catapult capable of flinging balls of burning sulphur up to half a mile.
- The infernal combustion engine (an internal combustion engine powered by pellets of gunpowder).
- The "Gonne", the Discworld's first and only hand-held firearm.
- A stationary bicycle used for exercise purposes. Its physical description suggests that it is a fully functional bicycle with the driving wheel propped up, though Leonard apparently has not considered its use as a vehicle.
- A quill that writes upside down (for use in free-fall, a parody of the Fisher Space Pen).
- Numerous unsuccessful flying machines (Prior to "The Last Hero").
- A small device for removing mountains (Apparently some sort of implosion nuclear bomb. "It makes use of a peculiar property of certain metals, namely that when compressed they go bang ... with considerable alacrity"
- The Barbarian Invaders Machine and the Quizzing Device, two attempts at mechanical pub entertainment in the Mended Drum, were apparently based on his designs.
- A submarine that can attach to ship hulls (or bore through them)
- A fireworks-based rocket launcher, complete with wire mesh sighting device
- Every trap leading to his cell
- A game similar to Scrabble (the Make Words With Letters That Have All Been Mixed Up Game)
