The Lost Inventions of Buckminster Fuller – Kindle Edition

Buckminster Fuller is widely known as the inventor of the geodesic dome, tensegrity, the Dymaxion Dwelling Unit and more. The Lost Inventions of Buckminster Fuller brings Fuller’s role in all of these discoveries into question, while presenting hard evidence that he is under-credited for many other remarkable inventions.

Trevor Blake (author of The Buckminster Fuller Bibliography) is a leading independent scholar on Fuller. Also found in this book are an analysis of geodesic dome integrity when subject to earthquakes, the influence on Fuller by Technocracy Incorporated, the influence of Fuller on the television program Lost, and much more.

US$ 1.99.

The Nestable Structural Joggled Diamond Shingles Geodesic

“The Nestable Structural Joggled Diamond Shingles Geodesic.  Please start patent drawings and application.  See T.C. drawings and models in your files.  [signature of R. Buckminster Fuller] 10/22/61.”  Drawing, 8.11 x 11 inches.  Previously unpublished.  From the synchronofile, one of the largest private collections of works by and about Fuller today.  Part of Fuller’s filing for patent 3,197,927 “Geodesic Structures” (also known as the fly’s eye dome).

Buckminster Fuller Bibliography – Kindle Edition

The Buckminster Fuller Bibliography is the most complete and accurate bibliography of “Bucky” Fuller to date. Excellent tool for tracking Fuller’s trajectory, and for finding rare titles in the field for your own collection. Authored by Trevor Blake of synchronofile.com, an independent resource on Fuller consulted around the world. Updated for this Kindle edition.  US$ 1.99.

Fuller in Fashion

Fashion is design you wear, mobile and kinetic, including both tension and compression components.  Fashion is the valve between the environment (everything except you) and the universe (everything including you).  R. Buckminster Fuller’s influence on fashion is an undocumented parallel to his investigation into design.

☂ Fuller was attentive to his appearance. In Your Private Sky (Baden: Lars Muller Publishers 1999), Fuller is quoted as saying:

I decided to make a complete experiment of peeling off from society in general, and started wearing T-shirts which nobody was doing then, went about without a hat and in sneakers – absolutely comfortable clothes. Then when people started getting interested in my Dymaxion House, very nice people with influence, and they’d say, “l’d like to give a dinner party for you” and so forth, I would show up in khaki pants and they’d be very shocked. And when Mrs. John Alden Carpenter, head of the Arts Council in Chicago, gave a beautiful dinner party, I showed up and rudely announced, “I don’t eat that kind of food,” and was in every way obnoxious. l was putting self and comfort ahead of my Dymaxion House, and I said, “You’re not allowed to do that. You must get over that. You must stop that looking eccentric, with everybody pointing at this guy.” So I decided the way to do that was to become the invisible man, and that means a bank clerk – so I put on a black suit, bank clerk’s clothing; then they would focus on what I was saying instead of my eccentricities. I said, “I must get rid of continually making too much of myself.”

Fuller also knew of the attraction of the nude. When he exhibited the Dymaxion House in the 1920s, he placed a nude doll in its bedroom.

☂ Continuum Fashion is the source for this graphic showing one of a pair of irregular geodesic hemispheres…

The graphic is a glimpse into the mathematics of the N12, a bikini designed with a 3-D scanner and printed with a 3-D printer. Continuum writes:

The N12 bikini is the world’s first ready-to-wear, completely 3D-printed article of clothing. All of the pieces, closures included, are made directly by 3D printing and snap together without any sewing. N12 represents the beginning of what is possible for the near future. N12 is named for the material it’s made out of: Nylon 12. This solid nylon is created by the SLS 3D printing process. Shapeways calls this material “white, strong, and flexible”, because its strength allows it to bend without breaking when printed very thin. With a minimum wall thickness of .7 mm, it is possible to make working springs and almost thread-like connections. For a bikini, the nylon is beautifully functional because it is waterproof and remarkably comfortable when wet.

☂ “When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” This quote is attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller but I cannot find the source. More significantly, the greatest online biographer of Fuller – Joe S. Moore at his incredible buckminster.info – also cannot place this quote. Can you?

☂ Photographer Moria Simmons and a friend went as “Buckminster Fuller and the Geodesic Dame” on Halloween 2008.  See Moria’s photograph here, and more of her photography (including a sneaky shot of the Dymaxion Car and the Fuller postage stamp) here. Could this be the same Moria who knitted a geodesic hat?

☂ Laura Dawson is a fashion designer. She used a geodesic dome to exhibit her Fall 2009 collection. (Thanks to grunch.net).

☂ The Buckminster Fuller Institute sells handbags and if memory serves they have sold pins and t-shirts in the past.

☂ Colleen Coghlan designed an inflatable type-two two-frequency geodesic pillow dome garment. She writes: “The inflatable dress (or ‘Wearable Space’) is, as the name describes, a garment that inflates into a personal space to sleep, rest or play within.”

Read more about the Wearable Space at The Cool Hunter.

☂ Connie Chang Chinchio sells a pattern for a geodesic cardigan.

☂ Life Magazine could have published a photograph of anyone assembling a Dymaxion Map in March 1943. They chose a contortionist in her circus uniform.

☂ Fuller Houses by Federico Neder (Baden: Lars Muller Publishers 2008) includes several items of Fuller fashion. The color plates section in the rear of the book shows a lapel pin of the Dymaxion House, presumably sold in the Henry Ford Museum where the Dymaxion House is on display. Fuller Houses also includes a sketch of a Dymaxion Hat designed by Irene Sharaff.

☂ The umbrella is a favored icon at synchronofile because it is a portable relatively inexpensive dome shelter produced on the industrial level. There are endless variations to the umbrella, from a banker’s basic black to the LED umbrellas of the film Blade Runner.  The Bucky Bar was raised in February 2010.  It was a geodesic dome made up of umbrellas designed by DUS Architects as a spontaneous (and unauthorized) dance bar in Rotterdam.

☂ Hair stylists Andreas and Markus contributed a two-frequency type two geodesic sphere hair weave to a fashion shoot by Purebred Productions.

☂ Florida-based Emilie produces beaded jewelry informed by energetic-synergetic mathematics.

☂ My first tattoo, which I gave myself around 1989, is a geometric shape referencing the work of Buckminster Fuller. No photographs of my tattoos have ever been published.

☂This essay first published on the twelfth of July 2011, a day of great significance to Buckminster Fuller.

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com

Synergetics Stew June 2011

The Buckminster Fuller Institute published the book Synergetic Stew: Explorations in Dymaxion Dining in 1982. Under this name, synchronofile.com publishes an irregular collection of brief notes relating to Buckminster Fuller.

☂ You are Listening to Deep Thoughts is a simple mix of a gentle background image, a quiet ambient music track and a recording of a thoughtful public speaker. More often than not, the thoughtful public speaker is R. Buckminster Fuller.

☂ “Network Awesome is a platform for entertaining and interesting TV. We spotlight the best from the past to create something new for the future. In a sense it’s TV about TV but our wider intent is to show something about culture as a whole. This can manifest itself in a kids cartoon from 1973, an interview from 1948 or a movie from 1993 – We’re pretty open minded about what Network Awesome is and what it can be. It’s our commitment to provide you what we think is interesting and clever TV – hopefully you agree.” Video of R. Buckminster Fuller regularly appears on Network Awesome.

☂ A Picture History of Shelter Systems is just what it says on the box. Founder Bob Gillis owns several key patents for modern camping tents that meet Fuller’s criterion of portability, tension rather than compression, curves and triangles rather than straight lines and 90-degree angles, industrial production and low cost. While there are many sculptures and models that use Kenneth Snelson’s tensegrity method, Gillis may be the only man to have created a tensegrity structure for habitation as Fuller advocated.

☂ On 3 July 1980 Fuller spoke as Visiting Consultant for Windstar in Snowmass Colorado USA. Co-founder of Windstar John Denver wrote a song for Fuller that year titled What One Man Can Do. A popular photograph from Fuller’s visit to Windstar shows him with the Dymaxion car and a Fly’s Eye dome. The Dymaxion Car was restored last year, and now the Fly’s Eye dome has also been restored. The dome will be on exhibit at Art Basel, Design Miami and Dacra, all located in Miami Beach Florida USA.

☂ As previously announced, D. W. Jacob’s play R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER: THE HISTORY (and mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE was performed 28 May – 4 July 2010 at the Arena Stage Crystal City in Washington, DC USA. Perhaps for the first time, scenes from the play are now online. See also this trailer from the Portland performance in 2008, and Jacob and Allegra Fuller-Snyder talking about the 2011 run here. I’m glad to have seen the play several times over, but I do hope it is filmed in full some day.

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com

R. Buckminster Fuller’s Influence on Science Fiction Films and Television

The Valley Forge dome.  Photograph by Trevor Blake

R. Buckminster Fuller’s influence on science fiction films and television during his lifetime (12 July 1895 – 1 July 1983).

First Spaceship on Venus
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [youtube]
1960. Film. Directed by Kurt Maetzig. Based on the novel The Astronauts by Stanisław Lem. An international rocket crew finds geodesic domes on the planet Venus.

Earth II
[IMDB]
1971. Television. Directed by Tom Gries.  A space station makes a claim for independence from the Earth it orbits.  R. Buckminster Fuller is credited as the “Technical Advisor for Earth” in Earth II. Fuller’s Dymaxion Map is used to track orbiting satellites in an Earth-bound control room.

Slaughterhouse 5
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [youtube]
1972. Film. Directed by George Roy Hill. Based on the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Billy Pilgrim is kept in a geodesic dome in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.

Silent Running
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [youtube]
1972. Film. Directed by Douglas Trumbull.  The spaceship Valley Forge includes several geodesic domes.

The Starlost
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [youtube] [The Starlost: The Word]
22 September 1973 – 5 January 1974. Television. Directed by Leo Orenstein. Created by Harlan Ellison. Executive Producer was Douglas Trumbull of Silent Running.  A geodesic dome from the spaceship Valley Forge from Silent Running is re-used on the spaceship The Ark.

Battlestar Galactica
[Wikipedia] [IMDB] [Battlestar Wiki: Agro Ship]
September 17, 1978 – April 29, 1979. Television. Created by Glen A. Larson.
The geodesic dome from the spaceship Valley Forge from Silent Running which had been re-used on the spaceship The Ark in The Starlost is re-used once more on an Argo Ship. This dome is on exhibit at the EMP Science Fiction Museum between 23 October 2010 – 4 March 2012.

See also LOST Domes.

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com

R. Buckminster Fuller: A Verb on Two Legs

In celebration of R. Buckminster Fuller and the 12 of July, the background images from my lecture “The Approximately Omnidirectional Ephemeralization of Richard Buckminster Fuller” as an 11 minute silent b/w video.

Also: for the month of July 2010 my two books on Fuller are deeply discounted.  This is the month to buy them!

The Buckminster Fuller Bibliography – buy now for $35.00 $25.00 $1.99.

A Study of Shelter Logistics for Marine Corps Aviation – buy now for $25.00 [TEMPORARILY OUT OF PRINT]

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com

R. Buckminster Fuller and Technocracy Incorporated

[An expanded, corrected and illustrated update of this article appears in The Lost Inventions of Buckminster Fuller.]

The history and goals of Technocracy Incorporated should be known by those interested in the life and works of R. Buckminster Fuller. Sometimes Technocracy and Fuller influenced each other, sometimes they were at odds, but knowledge of the former is necessary for understanding the latter.

Beginning in 1919, Howard Scott (1 April 1890 – 1 January 1970) led a survey of production and consumption of energy in North America. Scott and his team determined that a great deal of waste was occurring, and that this waste was the cause of economic disparity. Were the production and consumption of energy in North America organized toward efficiency and the prosperity of the continent, all would prosper with less work. Fuller conducted similar surveys. The first was on the production and consumption of copper as an employee of the Phelps-Dodge Corporation in 1936, As an employee of Fortune Magazine in 1938, Fuller compiled more inclusive lists of production and consumption of the ‘One Town World’ (an idea presented later as ‘Earth Inc.’ and later still as ‘Spaceship Earth’). In 1970 Fuller presented a hands-on method of studying global resources, the World Game.

Technocracy Incorporated was the organization Scott founded to promote and implement the creation of a North American Technate. The Technate is a corporation located in what is now the North American continent. Nearly all the resources required for self-perpetuation are to be found on or around this land mass, thus no further territory is required.  While all are welcome to study and promote Technocracy, Technocracy Incorporated has been explicit from its founding that they have no theory of an assumption to power, nor will they accept any political means of advancement.  The Technate will occur, but in its own time and through mass support.  Fuller often spoke of the means for global utopia being at hand, were the resources of the world re-directed from weaponry to ‘livingry.’  Technocracy is dead-set against the price system, Fuller was dead-set against capitalism.  Fuller was explicit from the late 1920s onward that he had no interest in holding political office, being imitated or starting a cult.  His life experiment was a one-man show.

Technocracy Incorporated holds that the true value of any good or service is to be found in the amount of electricity required to produce and distribute it.  Any other valuation is a means of social control, keeping a few wealthy and most poor.  By the implementation of the Technate, goods and services could be produced and distributed according to need rather than money.  Fuller spoke of the wealth of a body of people in terms of ‘energy slaves,’ or how much electricity that body of people produced and consumed.  By the creation of a global energy grid, the horsepower of those ‘energy slaves’ could be distributed as needed rather than as purchased.

Technocracy Incorporated published the Technocracy Study Course in 1934.  The book sold through several editions in rapid order and remains in print today on the Internet.  Several sections of the Technocracy Study Course will sound familiar to students of Fuller. For example, Technocracy Inc. has a plan for the re-invention of the automobile that shares common ground with Fuller’s Dymaxion Car…

It goes without saying that, in accordance with our criterion of least energy cost, the cars would be really streamlined, which would require that the engine be placed in the rear rather than in the front; they would be powered with the most efficient power unit that could be devised.

Technocracy Incorporated views housing as a basic human need with objective solutions – the objective solution of efficiency and production for function rather than profit. The following could have come from Fuller’s own pen…

So great is the edict of habit on the human animal that it becomes almost impossible for one to detach himself sufficiently to take an objective view of the subject of housing. Our houses, and our buildings and structures generally, resemble our clothing in that they attain a certain convention and thereafter we tend to accept them without further question. It never occurs to us to ask whether the prevailing convention is better or worse than other possible styles. The training of our architects is such as to tend to perpetuate this state of affairs. Aside from draftsmanship and a small amount of elementary training in strength of materials and other structural detail, our students of architecture spend most of their time studying the architectural details of the ceremonial buildings of the past-temples, cathedrals, palaces and the like. This accounts for the fact that power plants are seen with Corinthian columns, banks with Gothic windows, and libraries resembling Greek temples. The problem of designing buildings in accordance with the functions they are to perform seems rarely to have occurred to architects.

The successful architect of today is either one who has developed an architectural firm that receives commissions for designing large and expensive buildings, such as skyscrapers, hospitals, courthouses, and the like, or else an individual practitioner who knows sufficiently well the pecuniary canon of good taste to receive commissions for the design of residence in the expensive residential sections of our cities and their suburbs.

Technocracy Incorporated has consistently refrained from supporting or attacking any other thinker or school of thought. At least by name…

If an architect wishes to be really ‘modern,’ he then proceeds to do something ‘different.’ He designs houses made completely of glass or metal, and hung from a post. The two basic questions that seem never to occur in connection with these endeavors are: ‘What is the building for’? and ‘Would it be practicable to house the inhabitants of an entire continent in such structures’?

Here Technocracy Inc. gives a clear elbow to the ribs of Fuller, whose 4-D House of 1927 was to be made of metal and suspended from a pole.

Membership in Technocracy Inc. has waxed and waned but in no way is the organization a thing of the past.  Interest in Technocracy was greatest during a time of profound economic crisis in North America.  As North America (and the world) experiences a new low point in its fortunes, people are searching for new solutions to the old problems of economic disparity, waste of resources and political corruption.  Only one man – R. Buckminster Fuller – could be Bucky.  Technocracy Inc. is approaching its first century of activity, and membership is open.  The following resources are proof that interest in Technocracy is growing.

• Technocracy Inc.. “Eliminate the need for money.”  Continental Headquarters of Technocracy Incorporated.
• Technocracy Study Course Unabridged. “A complete digital scan of the Technocracy Study Course.”
• M. King Hubbert & The Technocracy Technate Design. “Author of the Technocracy Study Course. Hubbert was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was long affiliated with the Geological Society of America, receiving their Arthur L. Day Medal in 1954, being elected President of the Society in 1962, and receiving the Society’s Penrose Medal in 1973. He received the Vetlesen Prize from the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and Columbia University in 1981.”
• Technocracy.ca. A Canadian resource.
• Wikipedia on Howard Scott, Technocracy, the Technical Alliance, Thorstein Veblen, Frederick Soddy, R. Buckminster Fuller.
• The Internet Archive has some Technocracy texts.

• The Anti-Technocracy Forum. “I think technocracy, as a movement, was attractive as long as there was a growing suspicion that capitalism would not survive the depression – if in fact, it had not caused it. In any event, after World War II evaporated the depression, Technocracy immediately lost its bloom.”  Appears to be independent and distinct from Technocracy Incorporated.
• Technocracy.eu. “The Network of European Technocrats (NET) is an autonomous research organization comprised of volunteer members from around the world since 2005.” A European resource.  Appears to be independent and distinct from Technocracy Incorporated.
• The North American Technate and Technocracy Technate have largely the same content.  “This organization presents the findings and plan of action of the Technical Alliance.”  Appears to be independent and distinct from Technocracy Incorporated.
• Technocracy Technate Think Tank.  “The project is conducting a survey of those who have  been through the Technocracy Study Course and gained sufficient understanding of Technocracy’s Continental Social Design as to be able to offer suggestions as to what can be done to facilitate the transition from financial accounting to energy accounting and establishment of the North American Technate no later than 2012 AD these ideas will be collected, collated and presented here.” Independent and distinct from Technocracy Incorporated.
• Historical Background and Development of Social Security. The Social Security Administration describes Technocracy as “an eccentric reform movement,” one of many proposed solutions to problems in the United States that the Social Security Administration now claims to be addressing.

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com.

Geodesic Domes and Earthquakes

Trevor Blake has not been compensated by any manufacturer found in this article. Always consult with a professional before the construction or purchase of any building.

U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III airdrops humanitarian aid into the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 18 January 2010. Photograph by U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. James L. Harper Jr. Source: wikipedia.

[An expanded, corrected and illustrated update of this article appears in The Lost Inventions of Buckminster Fuller.]

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) made claims about how geodesic domes would weather an earthquake.  In Perspecta Vol. 1 (Yale School of Architecture, Summer 1952) Fuller claims geodesic domes will arrive at “predictably stable conditions under extreme stress of earthquakes.” In Inventions (St. Martin’s Press, 1983) Fuller wrote:

When I invented and developed my first clear-span, all-weather geodesic dome, the two largest domes in the world were both in Rome and were each 150 feet in diameter. They are St. Peter’s, built around A.D. 1500, and the Pantheon built around A.D. 1. Each weighs approximately thirty thousand tons. In contrast, my first 150-foot-diameter geodesic all-weather  dome installed in Hawaii weighs only thirty tons – one-thousandth the weight of its masonry counterpart. An earthquake will tumble both the Roman 150-footers, but would leave
the geodesic unharmed.

On 12 January 2010 the island nation of Haiti experienced a 7.0 M earthquake.  Thousands were killed, thousands more are now without shelter.  If Haiti had more geodesic domes, would fewer have died and would fewer now be without shelter?  Fuller’s claims about geodesic domes and earthquakes appear to have been made before the claims had been tested.  Others have made claims about geodesic domes and earthquaks, and some testing of geodesic domes and earthquakes has occurred since Fuller’s time.

Both professional and amateur dome builders have made claims about how geodesic domes can weather an earthquake.  Timberline Domes writes: “Geodesic structures have shown themselves to endure through severe storms and earthquakes, due to the strength of their design.” Michael W. Johnson was introduced to the geodesic dome at the Design School at North Carolina State University. Fuller and some NCSU students had built domes as early as 1949, as seen in these remarkable photographs. Mr. Johnson moved to El Salvadore in the 1970s, where in 1977 he experienced an earthquake. Since that time Mr. Johnson has penned an essay titled Geo Dome Homes for the Third World on building geodesic domes using local materials as a means of weathering earthquakes. These domes are scheduled to be built “after July 2008.” The Loma Prieta earthquake of 17 October 1989 was measured at a magnitude of 6.9. According to Oregon Dome Information Series #11, Disaster Fitness [pdf], this earthquake left the family of Joan Fevaros homeless. A few doors from the remains of their home was a still-standing geodesic dome home that offered them temporary shelter. “When [the Favaros family] went to the county building department to get a permit to demolish their old home to make way for a new one, they were told that the county would not allow any two-story homes to be built. Joan told them that they wanted to build a new two-story dome home on the site of their old home. The county official replied, ‘Oh, if it’s a dome home, then that will be OK.’” Disaster Fitness makes similar claims for a 6.2 M earthquake on 28 June 1992 near Yucca Valley, California.

Some professional dome manufacturers are willing to put their claims to the test, including direct aid to Haiti. American Ingenuity warranties their domes against structural damage due to hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. From the A.I. Warranty: “Your dome home is designed to withstand the powerful forces of nature. American Ingenuity’s warranty or guarantee assures against any structural storm damage as a result of the ravages of tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes regardless of the force. Such a warranty has been unheard of in the construction industry until now. [...] The founder of American Ingenuity, Michael Busick, manufactured and built his first concrete dome in 1976. Since then no American Ingenuity Dome has suffered any structural damage due to hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes.” Pacific Domes has made a one-time offer of up to 50% off list prices to send shelters to Haiti and will match donations made to World Shelters, World Shelters has its own international earthquake disaster reliefeffort involving geodesic structures and is supported by Humbolt State University class Engineering 305 Appropriate Technology. Monolithic Domes does not manufacture geodesic domes. Monolithic domes are manufactured by inflating a hemispherical shape then covering that shape with steel-reinforced concrete and insulation. What a Monolithic dome might lack in being mobile, it compensates for in being durable. Monolithic Domes were inspired by a 1950s lecture by Fuller. Monolithic Domes and musician Won-G had planned to build Monolithic domes in Haiti several weeks before the earthquake. This dome will house five hundred and is part of the One Dome at a Time project.

While before-the-fact claims about geodesic domes and earthquakes are easy to find, after-the-fact accounts of geodesic domes and earthquakes are difficult to find.  The Materials Park Building of  ASM International is housed under a geodesic dome raised in 1959.  This dome was designed by William Hunt Eisenman, John Terence Kelly, and Fuller. It was manufactured by the North American Aviation Company. The ASM dome weathered a 5.0 M earthquake on 31 January 1986. The extent of the damage was the sheering of a few bolts. In this single case, it appears Fuller’s claims about geodesic domes and earthquakes is accurate.

Geodesic domes may or may not have more integrity in an earthquake than other structures.  They have not been tested enough to make further claims.  But geodesic domes as emergency shelters are well tested and could be part of relief efforts in Haiti and elsewhere.

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com.

LOST Domes

[An expanded, corrected and illustrated update of this article appears in The Lost Inventions of Buckminster Fuller.]

The television program LOST (first broadcast on the United States channel ABC between 2004-2010) includes geodesic domes.  I do not intend to say much here about the show other than I have enjoyed it tremendously.  The sixth and final season of LOST begins in February 2010.  This essay will discuss the geodesic domes appearing in LOST.

To date the dome has been seen in three forms.  The first version of the dome is the dome itself, seen in the episode ‘Man of Science, Man of Faith’ on 21 September 2005.  This dome is a full-sized set, while the other two are models.  It is implied that this dome is a 5/8th-sphere made up of panels with one or more entryways.  The second version of the dome is a model of the completed dome, seen in the episode ‘Orientation’ on 5 October 2005.  This dome is a cutaway model made of panels of a 5/8th-sphere.  The second version of the dome is a model of the dome under construction, seen in the episode ‘Namaste’ on 18 March 2009.  This dome is an in-progress 5/8th-sphere made of struts. The ‘Man of Science’ dome and another dome appear in the computer game LOST: Via Domus.  All of the geodesic domes appearing in LOST are class one, four-frequency, 5/8ths truncated spheres.

The word geodesic is made up of the root words geo (Earth) and desic (divide).  A geodesic sphere is a sphere divided by lines.  The equator around the Earth is a geodesic line, dividing the Earth into a Northern and Southern hemisphere (partial sphere).  The equator and the Prime Meridian line divide the Earth into four sections.  A longitude line 90-degrees from the Equator and from the Prime Meridian would divide the Earth into eight sections.  Were the points where these lines cross connected within the Earth, the connections would form an octahedron.  If the triangular faces of that octagon were subdivided into smaller triangles each, and if these triangles were projected out from a central point onto the surface of the earth, it would form the coordinates for a geodesic sphere.  Geodesic spheres can also be ‘projected out’ from an imagined icosahedron inside a sphere.  If the triangular faces of an icosahedron are subdivided into smaller triangles and these smaller triangles are projected out from a central point onto the surface of a sphere, the familiar pattern of a geodesic sphere is seen.

The first patent for a geodesic dome shelter was awarded to Walter Bauersfeld in 1925 (see The Lost Inventions of Buckminster Fuller by Trevor Blake).  Buckminster Fuller popularized the use of the geodesic dome.  He also conducted and inspired a great deal of original research into the use of geodesic domes as shelters.  Fuller first referred to ‘alternative’ and ‘regular’ domes, but the terms class one and class two have become standardized terms.

Class one and class two domes are differentiated by how the faces of a polyhedron (in this case, the triangular faces of an icosahedron) are subdivided before being projected out from a central point onto the surface of a sphere .  A class one dome divides the faces of a polygon more or less parallel to the edges of the polygon.  A class two dome divides the faces of a polygon more or less perpendicular to the edges of the polygon.  To see the difference, draw two triangles.  Place a mark in the center of each edge of each triangle.  On the first triangle, draw a line connecting the marks.  On the second triangle, draw a line connecting the mark to the opposite corner.  The first triangle will be subdivided into four smaller triangles, one in the center and one in each corner.  The second triangle will be subdivided into six smaller right-angle triangles, each one touching a center point.  The first triangle is how the face of an icosahedron is subdivided in a class one geodesic sphere.  The second triangle is how the face of an icosahedron is subdivided in a class two geodesic sphere.  The LOST domes are class one domes.

The frequency of a geodesic sphere is how many times a projected polygon face is subdivided.  An icosahedron has a frequency of one (or 1v), as its faces are not subdivided.  The first triangle mentioned in the previous paragraph, the subdivided triangular faces found in a class one geodesic sphere, are two frequency (or 2v).  Triangular faces on an icosahedron can be divided into any number of frequencies.  Low frequency geodesic spheres have the advantage of a uniformity of components.  High frequency geodesic spheres have the advantage of a closer approximation to a sphere.  Most of the triangles on a geodesic sphere can be seen as part of a hexagon.  Some triangles, however, are also part of pentagons.  The edges of the triangles making up pentagons on geodesic spheres radiate from a central point to another pentagon on the sphere.  Counting the number of edges from pentagon to pentagon (including edges in a pentagon) reveals the frequency of a geodesic sphere.  The LOST domes have a pentagon at the highest point.

The LOST domes are not geodesic spheres, but are instead geodesic domes.  A single pentagon of five triangles on a 4 frequency geodesic sphere is a 1/8th truncated sphere.  Adding the band of triangles around that pentagon makes a 1/4th truncated sphere.  The LOST domes are 5/8ths truncated spheres.  Geodesic spheres truncated into domes are a collision point between mathematical purity and architectural integrity.  The truncation lines of a geodesic sphere are nearly flush with a surface to sit on, but not exactly flush.  Readers are encouraged to join many generation of amateur geometric dome model builders.  Desert Domes offers an online calculator for finding component measurements of a 4 frequency geodesic sphere and 1/2 truncated sphere.  The audience of LOST is an audience ready for figuring out the rest.

The narrative of LOST places the construction of these geodesic domes in the mid-1970s.  In the mid-1970s Buckminster Fuller was at the height of his popularity and influence.  The use of domes in LOST helps establish when the story is taking place and the sympathies of the characters that constructed them.

References
‘Man of Science, Man of Faith’
lostpedia.com | hulu.com
‘Orientation’
lostpedia.com | hulu.com
‘Namaste’
lostpedia.com | hulu.com
Lost: Via Domus
lostpedia.com | ubisoft.com

- Trevor Blake

Trevor Blake is the author of the Buckminster Fuller Bibliography, available at synchronofile.com