[Fernando K]

This is my first post in this forum. I have not access to bibliography, but I have be found that at Madrid Codex, folio 18 v - discovered in 1967 - is a "automatic" match lock design.

Only in the book of Harold Peterson y Robert Helman "The Great Guns" I found a reference to this subject, without any image, and confused with the flintlock: ".......sketch for a prototype of the flint-striking lock". Similarly, in the journal "Ciencia e Investigación" March 1998, spanish version of the magazine "Scientific American" there is an article de Vernard Foley "Leonardo da Vinci and the invention of the wheel - lock" without mention of this issue.

The short space does not allow me to dwell too much but I note that Leonardo invented or designed a tumbler moved by a spring and held by a sear of vertical motion, and moved the serpentine as occurred in the subsequent locks of snaphaunce, flint and percussion. In turn, the fall of the serpentine moved automatically the cover-pan, discovering the priming powder by means of a lever, as wold happen later in the snaphaunce locks of different sources (Netherlands, Arabic, Germanic and Italic or "a la florentina"). When mounting the serpentine, conversely, closing the pan.

Leonardo's drawings are sufficiently clear and explicit. I´m not aware of any such study in related publications about this matter.

Affectionately from Argentina,

Fernando Keilty