Drawings by Leonardo of the odometers In the? De architectura? of the Roman architect and engineer, Vitruvius (80-15BC).Odometers are used to measure the distance travelled by a vehicle on land or at sea. A machine for measuring mileage that Vitruvius described may have been invented around 264 BS by Archimedes during the First Punic War. Leonardo designed an odometer to record distances for making maps, for military purposes and for canal construction.The mechanism shown on the right, (Fig. 3), records the distance that has been travelled whilst (Fig.2), and (Fig. 1) represent two odometers. It is likely that the operation of the one-wheel odometer sketched in Fig. 2 was designed by Leonardo applying the mechanism as described by Vitruvius. The drawing in Fig. 1 is based on Leonardo's redesign of the odometer in Fig. 2 to improve its construction and performance.