Walther Bauersfeld

German engineer (1879–1959) at the Carl Zeiss optical works, inventor of the modern projection planetarium and builder of the first geodesic dome.

To project a night sky, Bauersfeld needed a precise hemispherical screen. The lightweight iconic-triangulated shell he devised for the Zeiss planetarium in Jena — a thin concrete skin on a subdivided icosahedral steel framework, completed in the early-to-mid 1920s — was, in structural terms, the first geodesic dome.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: forebear. Bauersfeld is the central forebear in the geodesic dome's priority story. He built his triangulated Jena dome in 1922–1926, roughly a quarter-century before R. Buckminster Fuller independently developed, named, popularized, and (in the United States) patented the geodesic dome. Fuller's historical claim rests on independent reinvention and on the mathematical generalization, energetic analysis, and relentless promotion he brought to it — but Bauersfeld's planetarium means Fuller was not, strictly, the first to raise such a structure. The corpus's dome histories name Bauersfeld precisely to keep that priority honest.

See Also

• Wizard of the Dome (Wizard of the Dome) — biography of Fuller centered on the dome's invention and history
• Buckminster Fuller: A Bibliographical Biography (Buckminster Fuller: A Bibliographical Biography) — bibliographic essay noting the dome's precedents

Sources

• Geodesic Dome (source reference) — documents Bauersfeld's Jena planetarium as the first geodesic dome