Did Churchill invent the Tank and where did the name come from ?

[NigelS]

.... It was an idea that was in the air. There was nothing new about it.

True, there's nothing new about the concept at all. I've just been to an exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci and his inventions, and he'd come up with a design for a man powered, multi cannon, 'tank' type war machine in the 15th century (althoughly, admittedly, it didn't have tracks or armoured plating and looked more like a flying saucer than the designs we're familiar with today). Had it been developed into usable weapon it's not hard to believe that back in those days it would have had no trouble at all in instilling terror into an unsuspecting enemy. An accompanying film showed a mock up built by the army in recent years which, after correcting a minor design flaw (contra rotating wheels!) probably included by Leonardo included to confound spies & rivals, was shown to be capable of being propelled onto a smooth, level battlefield (it definitely wouldn't have been suitable for WW1!) by three or four men.

Undoubtedly, the man was genius in the fields of art, science & technology with ideas way that were way ahead of his time.

NigelS

[per ardua per mare per terram]

I've just been to an exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci and his inventions, and he'd come up with a design for a man powered, multi cannon, 'tank' type war machine in the 15th century

I'm not sure if anyone doubts Leonardo da Vinci's genius or that he had come up with the idea of an armour fighting vehicle centuries before WWI. But what he came up with was different from the 'tanks' developed in WWI and especially the name.

[Khaki]

It's fortunate that WSC didn't think that it looked like a 'boiler', otherwise we might have ended up with the Boiler Regiment,

khaki