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{{Character Data
|title= Leonard of Quirm
|photo=Blank.jpg|
|name= Leonard of Quirm (da Quirm)
|age= 
|race= human
|occupation= inventor, genius
|appearance= balding, with a fringe of white hair
|residence= "imprisoned" in the [[Patrician's Palace]]
|death= 
|parents= 
|relatives= 
|children= 
|marital status=
|books= {{WS}}<br>{{MAA}}<br>{{J}}<br>{{T5E}}<br>{{TLH}}<br>''[[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{SM}}<br>{{TT}}<br>{{MR}}
}}
A great engineer, inventor, tinkerer and painter, living in [[Ankh-Morpork]]. Also known as "Leonardo" or "da Quirm". Though his hair is all white and he is balding, his age is - as yet - indeterminable to any degree. 

Leonard is first mentioned by [[Vitoller]] as living in the [[Street of Cunning Artificers]]. Vitoller knows Leonard of Quirm (as he calls him) as being mainly a painter who creates planes that can't fly. This is during the events of ''Wyrd Sisters''.

Leonard currently resides as a prisoner in the [[Patrician's Palace]] having gone missing some 5 years prior to the events of {{J}}, where he can now work in peace except for when the [[Vetinari|Patrician]] needs him. "Prisoner" may be too strong a word, as Leonard is perfectly happy where he is, as long as he gets his drawing supplies and his washing done (by the redoubtable Miss [[Triplet]]). In fact, the very cunning and subtle traps that lead to his prison were designed by him, and at the conclusion of [[Jingo]], he returned of his own accord. The reason why he is locked up is that the Patrician finds Leonard's naivet&eacute; dangerous, and yet due to his unique nature, the Patrician is reluctant to kill him outright. It is also due to his lack of political knowledge that Vetinari finds in Leonard a useful confidante when he needs to speak his thoughts freely without receiving any input, and keeps Leonard around in case he will ever need his services. 

In addition to designing powerful weapons while believing that nobody would be so bad as to use them, Leonard also tends to scribble designs of these weapons on books that he is reading, inadvertently revealing to these bad people that such a thing has been designed and may, in fact, have already been manufactured (see {{MAA}}). An [[Alchemists' Guild|Alchemist]] once commented that Leonard was a dabbler and ought to call himself "Mr. Doodle". Usually, the Alchemists are the worst dabblers in non-magic matters (magical matters being the domain of the [[wizards]]); it is significant that Leonard is considered by the Alchemists as a dabbler. The alchemists have dismissed a very heavy metal, which has to be painstakingly garnered in very small amounts from tons and tons of ore, as more trouble than it's worth: they have dubbed it ''Uselessium'', whose chemical shorthand is surely a simple "U", and sidelined it as a minor curiosity.  Leonard has studied it further and estimates that this could be the basis of a very effective explosive, which could revolutionise the mining and civil engineering industries if ever whole mountains need to be reduced to rubble for ease of removal or ease of examination. Harnessed to peaceful ends, this could in fact herald new, clear, days for the human race...

==Works==
Leonard likes inventing weapons of war but refuses to believe that anyone really would use his dangerous inventions. In fact, Leonard's brain is particularly receptive to [[Inspiration Particles|particles of raw inspiration]], ideas that sleet through the universe and strike inventors' or artists' minds in the dead of the night. As such, Leonard has engineered the [[gonne]] and siege engines alongside [[Kite|flying machines]], [[Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device|submarines]], [[Engine for the Neutralizing of Information by the Generation of Miasmic Alphabets|message encryption/decryption devices]], [[Quizzing Device|pub game devices]], and engines for making very fast coffee. Oddly enough, his creativity seems to stop when needed to give appealing names to his inventions: for example, for his machine capable of travelling ''sub''mersed in a ''marine'' environment he came up with the name of "[[Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device]]".

Leonardo also sketched the motorcycle, in the margin of a book about theoretical weapons of war designed to make people shudder with fear and refrain from building them.  This is in the library at [[Unseen University]] and inspired the [[Librarian]] to build such a device, as best he could from the materials available to him. [[Death]] put this to good use in {{SM}}. 

The most famous painting by Leonard is the ''[[Nanny Ogg|Mona Ogg]]''. This shows an attractive young woman with a wide smile, showing her teeth. Some say that the teeth from this painting would follow the viewer around the room and all the way to the street outside. Another description of Leonard's paintings, although unclear whether it's about ''Mona Ogg'' or another piece, is that it would follow the viewer home and do the washing-up. The woman in Leonard's {{wp|Lady_with_an_Ermine|''Woman Holding Ferret''}} is considered the epitome of beauty. Presumably in the past, Leonard may have had a relation of some sort with Nanny Ogg, though the nature of this is unknown.  

Leonard was also responsible for painting a picture of the entire Disc, complete with elephants and turtle, on the ceiling of the [[Temple of Small Gods]] in [[Ankh-Morpork]].  This project was commissioned by [[Fate]] as a penance for Leonard's hubris in building the [[Kite]] and was meant to be impossible to complete in the ten years allotted so that the [[Gods]] would be justified in destroying the city afterwards.  Leonard was finished in three weeks.

==Annotation==
He is the (pretty obvious) parodistic Discworldian counterpart of [[Roundworld]]'s [[wikipedia:Leonardo da Vinci|Leonardo da Vinci]], with a heap of [[wikipedia:Sir George Cayley|Sir George Cayley]] (the [[Roundworld]] "father" of aeronautics) thrown in. Possibly, da Quirm is a parody of [[wikipedia:Nikola Tesla|Nikola Tesla]], fore-runner inventor of the alternating-current, energy-saving light bulbs, radio, radar to hand-held oscillators that generated earthquakes (and, by some, the invention of [[wikipedia:Tunguska Explosion|nuclear weapons]]). Tesla was affectionate of pigeons and had a penchant for being lousy at giving names to his inventions ie 1901 patent 'Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy' - Solar Power.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Quirm, Leonard of]]
[[Category:Serial characters|Quirm, Leonard of]]
[[Category:Supporting characters|Quirm, Leonard of]]
[[Category:Human characters|Quirm, Leonard of]]

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