Chapter 11
Preview of Building
2I have listened with great interest to discussions regarding decentralization and centralization and I have thought that the question of whether it is valid to decentralize or centralize is unanswerable because it deals with one one-way sign in two-way traffic. It is a static question in a dynamic universe.
3 Man was invented a mobile device and process. He has survived through his ability to advance or retreat as his mortal requirements have dictated. Of his two primary faculties, quickness is of great importance but intellect is first.
4 He recognizes that vital quickness may be momentary reflex, but that satisfactory continuities are proportional to his degree of comprehension of the consequence of his initiative. Degree of comprehension he measures in the terms of the complex integration of all individuals’ all-time experience, as processed by intellectual integrity. His quickness would be a spontaneous servant to that integrity.
5 Despite intermittent submissiveness to runaway momentums of residual ignorance, man guards most dearly and secretly his freedom of thought and initiative. Therefrom emanates the social-industrial relay, from self starter to group starters.
6 Out of this freedom alone understanding may be generated. Man recognizes understanding as an activated circuit of mutual comprehension by individual minds. Understanding must be plural. However, because individual experience is unique, understanding can be developed only in principle out of the compounding significance of plurality of experience. Thus, man knows that the voluntary interactions of understanding dealing in fundamental principles will always master involuntary mass actions, and that individual freedom ever anticipates and ultimately masters mutual emergency.
7 As man has become knowledgeful, he has translated the principles discovered in universe into abetting his quickness and mobility. The physical effect of this translation has been demonstrated in important degree only within this past half century. Born with legs and not with roots, man is in principle mobile. Prior to World War I, man’s locomotion was primarily accomplished by his legs. He rode in vehicles only about three hundred miles per year. Oft-repeated Army surveys show that man has always walked an average of thirteen hundred miles per year, and probably always will.
8 In 1919, it was evidenced that the species ‘‘man’’ had changed. Man had become an invention which moved about primarily by mechanical means. In the United States, he to and fro-ed in 1919 about sixteen hundred miles mechanically. He continued walking thirteen hundred miles per year, but instead of sitting in rocking chairs, he was sitting in moving automobiles. Thus he totalled twenty-nine hundred miles in 1919. At the beginning of World War II, the average man was moving mechanically six thousand miles per annum; however, he continued walking an additional thirteen hundred miles per annum, for a total of seventy-three hundred miles per year. The U.S. behavior curve in this respect is a pilot or ‘‘tendril’’ curve of the ‘‘world’’ curve to accomplishment of equivalent mechanical acceleration per capita. The world-man curve is now visibly rising toward ultimate coincidence with U.S. man’s curve.
9 Up to World War I, man’s primary economic ideas and social viewpoints were those developed within the visible horizon. Those who went beyond the horizons were rated as escapists— ‘‘irresponsibility’’ was thought to increase with motion. But as of 1940 the average U.S. housewife was clocking up an annual ten thousand mechanical miles and thirteen hundred foot miles, a total of eleven thousand three hundred, or a seven-fold step-up from her pre-1914 sixteen hundred miles. The average salesman was clocking thirty-five thousand mechanical miles, the average air hostess one hundred thousand miles, while continuing her pedestrian thirteen hundred miles. Our young people were about to accelerate en masse their annual comings-and-goings by world encirclement. Clearly, we could no longer insist that motion indicated irresponsibility—quite the reverse! Those who were masters of the greatest motion and velocity were the top members of society. Responsible participation of all workers involved accelerating mobilization synchronous to the evolving needs of the world deploying industrial complex.
10 We have come to the realization that we are in an all-dynamic universe, that the old concept of ‘‘at rest’’ is not normal. When we lie down to go to sleep, we do not shut off the valves and freeze into rigid statues. Our billions of atoms take on a myriad of constellation activities in lieu of a few galaxy motions of the day’s routine regimentation of the body’s sub-assemblies.
11 All our curves of measurement of man’s earthly doings show an acceleration ‘‘upward,’’ that is, with ‘‘at rest’’ regarded as normal, the curves of man’s doings have taken the shape of a ski (reading from heel to toe). The curves have ascended now into almost vertical abnormality. Is this race schizophrenia? No! It is just that our standards of reference are cockeyed.
12 Obviously, we must now abandon the unrealistic ‘‘at rest’’ and refer all our affairs to the realistic yardstick of energy and its velocity aspect, as recently and universally adopted by science from Albert Einstein’s work. To do so we need only revolve our charts to ninety degrees of angle, so that we may see the curves descending precipitously from the old heights of ignorance and abnormality and tending to level off into dynamic equilibrium with the all-motion universe, infinitely normal about us. Thus quickness displaces static death as the normal of both life and universe. Life is no longer exceptional-to but inherent-in the universe.
13 To Einstein’s C3, which is the symbol of speed of omni-directional growth of the surface of a light wave which is one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second ‘‘squared,’’ the speed of sight (our personal eyesight) is normal, for it too operates at the speed of light, and not ‘‘instantly,’’ which is an obsolete word of yesterday’s magic. One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second is only relatively fast; compared to the velocities of man’s invented vehicles. One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second is relatively very slow compared to the man-invented nonsense called ‘‘instantaneous,’’ that is, infinite-super-billions-of-miles-in-no-time-at-all. Instantaneous is one of those out-of-this-universe concepts which we are now abandoning.
14 One of the most important contributions of science to society is its development of the ability to consider all of the wonders of the physical universe as measurable and rational and of immediate practical significance. The paradise of nature is for now and not for never-never.
15 Man’s voice travels the telephone circuit, wired or wireless, at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. Sunbathing, he ‘‘sees’’ heat waves with his skin, received at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second which is distinctly normal to his reality. Man spontaneously relegates his other sensorial faculties to secondary consideration. He can only hear by air-waves arriving at the tawdry velocity of one fifth of a mile per second. He can rarely smell events occurring at a mile’s distance, but, aided by a hurricane, may receive his ‘‘whiffed’’ report at one fiftieth of a mile per second. Man can acquire tactile report at ranges no greater than that of his fingertip. He can grope no faster than one thousandth of a mile per second. Held to apprehension of the phenomena of universe by his groping tactile faculty alone, the velocity factor becomes approximately nil.
16 The world seems at rest. Relative only to the apparent inertia of universe, as apprehended by this lowest-order faculty—the tactile—could the velocity of visual apprehension be rated as ‘‘instantaneous.’’
17 Fortunately for man, he has always subconsciously asked to see the vital phenomena. Thus he ‘‘witnesses.’’
18 Solely within the paltry dimensions of life as serviced preponderantly by hearsay, smellsay and touchsay have the blinders of habit persuaded man to accept the ignorant ‘‘reality,’’ which excitedly refers experience only to the negligible velocity of ‘‘at rest.’’ Static brains will apprehend as radical and revolutionary every discovery and intellectually informed reorientation of the individual as won through progressive augmentation of the faculties of highest order—instrumented science.
19 Man sees only by omni-dimensional images illuminated within the experience-inventoried brain after images regeneratively fed-back by the energy of momentary sensorial scannings. It is significant that he gets direct or nondelayed visual report only from the actively radiant energetic centers of light, notably the stars. All other visual reports wait upon indirect routing by their superficial reflection from passive structures of energetic impasse, the planetary mass phenomena.
20 With this coming of the realization of the normal velocity of energy—in the all-energy physical universe—we have to recognize that man is increasing magnificently his range and frequency of informed activity. Manifesting intellect as well as energy, man is taking progressive measure of the universe, and through intellect is slowly mastering degrees of its infinite energy.
21 Obviously, man now has to think beyond the limits of yesterday’s politics, beyond the limits of yesterday’s personal ambitions. By ‘‘personal’’ we mean the limited dimensions of the lower order senses. We will have to look at the problem of discovering the trends to tomorrow’s building in a delimited manner, else we will have a poor preview of that building.
22 Do not assume that delimited thought is now easy. We all say we know that it is five hundred years since Copernicus postulated and four hundred years since Galileo demonstrated that the earth was not the static center of a universe revolving about it. The latter idea we now declare silly. But listen to your most advanced astronomer, when professionally off-guard at, for instance, a seashore picnic on a summer evening say to his daughter, ‘‘Look at the beautiful sunset, darling,’’—and worse; he ‘‘sees’’ the sun setting—and so do you.
23 You are, practically speaking, five hundred years behind your own assertions of fact. You still say ‘‘up’’ and ‘‘down’’ when there are no such directions in universe. You mean ‘‘in’’ and ‘‘out’’ from the center of the spinning, cosmos-zooming earth ball. If you will say, ‘‘I am going out to the attic and into the ground level,’’ you will accelerate your reliable reality. In that fast-moving ‘‘advanced’’ scientific activity to which man proudly refers us for up-dated thinking—the aeronautical world—the professional meteorologist reports to us of ‘‘winds blowing from the northwest,’’ just as though the wing-headed little zephyrs drawn upon ancient maps were yet puffing from a place—the northwest, wherever that is! Whereas we know that the air is being ‘‘drafted’’ southeastward by the thermals and their low pressure centers, for you can’t blow wind more than a few hundred feet—it turns around on itself. Every ring-puffing smoker knows that. However, air may be sucked over vast circuits. Then, too, we all speak and think of things when no things exist—all is dynamic interaction. So don’t let’s feel too smart. Let us humbly seek to put our reality into dynamic and intellectually disciplined order.
24 While the atomic spaceship may become the dramatic headliner in nearby decades, in the structure, mechanics and life of tomorrow’s single family livingry, we will witness by far the greatest evolutionary change from the traditionally familiar. The traditional house, embodying the residue of personable ignorance, has, by its ‘‘at rest’’ fixations, contrived to stem the dynamic flows of emergent reality to a greater degree than any other category of life’s fixed preoccupations. Thus, dwelling inertia has, in effect, stretched the delicate flexible tension structure of comprehensive evolution flowing by, until, as a pellet tensed in the critical vertex of universal distortion, it must be impelled violently toward our dynamic life needs, eventually to take equilibrious and synchronization after the severe reverberations have subsided. This greatest single evolutionary change in men’s ways of solving their living problems will be witnessed before this century1 is over.
25 Stated in a less literary manner, the single family dwelling represents the very last major item of the whole of man’s contrived environmental paraphernalia to come under his scientific scrutiny and subsequent transformation through astronomically augmented interactions of the world-embracing dynamic principles of industry.
26 All large buildings are processed by an army of engineers, economic experts, social scientists and the combined tactical thinking of our day’s financial and labor leaders. In this respect of processing-by-combined-scientific-expertness, big buildings are almost on a par with the complex end products of industrial society, such as the ocean steamship, the automobile, the steel mill and the telephone system, organizationally, but not conceptually.
27 In contrast to the circumstances of conception of scientific industrial end products, less than four per cent of this country’s single family dwellings were erected by union labor; less than two per cent were designed by architects and almost none engaged the services of the engineer in their primary complex designing. Engineers have only had a part in the original design of the mass produced household equipment, which is secondary.
28 The scientist, physical or sociological, has had an absolute zero relationship to the structuring of the single family dwelling, which latter nonetheless clearly persists as the major physical ecological contrivance of the human species. In it are gestated the first and all-important phases of the individual’s group life. Here the individual learns that he is not only the product of union, but its infinite servant.
29 The lack of application of the historically accumulated intellectual advantage of mankind (as realized through the prototyping activities of the industrial complex) to the conceptioning of the family habitat is not because the single family dwelling trends to obsolescence as a way of life. It is because:
- 1.
- an a priori theory of life's trends and purposes has not been evolved,
- 2.
- an a priori theory of dwelling has not been evolved, and
- 3.
- the priority of full industrial-advantage has hitherto never been applied to the problem of the single family dwelling!
30 Where relative scarcities exist in the over-all scheme of satisfaction of man’s needs, and emergencies develop therein, priorities are established.
31 The general principles of industrialization may be looked upon as comprising one great big complex and still-scarce tool which wraps up all the latest technical advantage in realizing predictable performance.
32 It is obvious that up to now man could not justify assigning priority of technical advantage to housing in wartime. He would not raise his home standard of living while the boys were in tent, trench or barrack, and required no upped standards for these shifting purposes.
33 In peacetime, priority of scientific and technical knowledge and effort has gone either to home industry or field occupations, or to outright emergency services.
34 In peacetime, home industry priority has gone to the fashioning of the simple universal tools, with which to consolidate the gains of his intellectual and technical experience, e.g., the screwdriver.
35 In the superficial evolution taking place in home industry, the houses of the commerce-expediters were essentially instruments of propaganda, persuasively proclaiming the physical wealth-increments exploitable in the industrial principle. Each propaganda-mansioning represented the natural coloring of a short-lived fashionable phase. Houses of the workers were the meagerest of knocked-up contrivances and hovels, designed only to bring their efforts into proximity with the evolving industrial complex. No priority of scientific acumen was involved in the conceptioning of either type of establishment.
36 In the field-preoccupations of hunting, animal husbandry and agriculture, the first two obviously did not require scientific and industrial conceptioning in the realization of dwelling or permanent abode. Hunting was an inherently swift, dangerous, single-handed activity of a man sleeping under the stars. Animal husbandry, though seasonally mobile, involved the most scientific and technical preconceptioning of the mobile habitat for the shepherd family, but the realizations of the scientific principles of his tenting were entirely remote from industrial rendition. Ships of the industrial commerce embodied the only industrial rendering of mobile habitats—habitats, however, designed with approximately no direct concern with family gestation.
37 In his original agricultural frontiering or field industry, man gave all priority of effort and of technical advantage, to affairs of the soil because not only his own family’s survival needs could thereby be supplied, but, if nature were bountiful, his excess increments could be converted to increasing the technical advantage over nature feed specialists who were developing industrialization. For this he conceived omni-purpose wealth articulators, in the form of money or credit, with which to participate in the growing advantages generated by the industrial complexities simplifying personal work.
38 His housing was, therefore, contrived in an expedient manner out of salvage materials culled from the land, incidental to the clearing of the soil for agricultural purposes. He attended to his building in the ‘‘off’’ periods and after regular priority work. His housing was contrived as fortress and shelter against marauders and element. As noted, it was contrived out of the salvage—trees and stones—on a hopeful basis and not upon scientific and industrial predetermination of its behavior and stress capacities. He hoped that fire, tornado, termite, flood, pestilence and rot would not come—for he could not design these salvage materials into competence by making them look like a castellated fortress. Housing was never designed upon a scientifically predetermined schedule of comprehensive performance requirements, rendered in knowledgeful techniques by a vast orchestra of tools out of world-garnered and industrially evolved substances, which would not only assure predictable standards of performance in each category of structural and mechanical requirement, but would make possible complete logistic advance planning regarding the involvement.
39 Historically speaking, the important eras of technical advance have been precipitously introduced through the obvious wartime emergency which articulates the between-wars scientific accumulation of new degrees of potential advantage over the energetic properties of nature. The magnitudes of the between-war scientific accumulation represent a geometric progression. At the termination of each war phase the ‘‘ins’’ level off their economy to exploit the new degree of technical advantage. Deprived of participation in the technical advantage at this proven level, the ‘‘outs’’ take advantage of the geometric progression of the scientific potential and introduce once more degrees of technical advantage which, though of seemingly lesser physical investment, threaten supremacy over the economics of the previous technical level because of the imponderable yet enormous knowledge-gains in means of impounding larger blocks of cosmic energy within given pounds of terrestrial matter—thereby disposed in more power-full arrangement. The incompatibility of the two levels of technical preoccupation is further aggravated by the failure to transfer priority of use of the industrial complex to realization of the theory of continuous anticipatory economic volition from its preoccupation with the traditional and intermittent curative volition. Economic and eventually civil rupture ensues and the open warfare cycle is seemingly to be repeated.
40 As the science potential accelerates to greater magnitude, the severity of rupture would seem to promise like progression. But history has produced a fundamental surprise at this point, an entirely new orientation commensurable with our rotation of the frame of reference from a static to a velocity norm.
41 Historically viewed, wars were carried to a relatively remote front. When the front was driven home to one side, that side gave in. As wars have employed the industrial complex by mandate and as the industrial complex has come to be total to world resource, so has war become total. With the development of totality, war has come to be waged not as much on many fronts as on many spots. Differentiation of lands and sea has been lost in significance of one-sky. Blitzkrieg brought the war everywhere as multiple focii of sky-diving planes and land-crawling submarines. Total war involves ultimate controlling of missiles from anywhere on earth to anywhere on earth. Long distance is total and the concept of front has vanished.
42 War is dynamic and its two dynamic phases are offense and defense. As offense obtains omni-directional parity, supremacy lies in relative defense advantage. Relative defense advantage lies in the direction of relative mobility, in the ability to dodge widely and without loss of poise—not to dig in.
43 The historical surprise develops as the result of:
- a.
- The contraction of interval between increasing emergencies until naught but emergency exists. (That is our condition today despite our none-too-confident whistling in the dark.)
- b.
- Enforced occupation of hitherto hostile equatorial and polar environments.
- c.
- The interim conquest of the environmental extremes in the military conquest of the air and the ocean depths.
- d.
- Reorientation of the exploitation course of the industrial complex, with
the ninety-two regenerative chemical elements isolated, and the original
total industrial machine completed out of the inventory of the ninety-two
regenerative chemical element resources, and with unlimited cosmic energy,
piped and valved, ready to be loosed into economic circulation. It has been
realized that, inasmuch as the technical advantage trends to the infinite
production for increasing numbers by lesser numbers, the key to economic
and subsequent political expansion is the consumer—the greater the number
of consumers, the greater the expansion. The more numerous the consumers’
needs and the more frequent their satisfaction, the greater the expansion. The
economic volition trends to accelerate total world occupation by total world
man in total dynamic enjoyment.
44The biological competition (inherent in evolution) to accelerate standards of satisfaction bi-polarizes in total world struggle for management of the industrial complex. Conscious courting of world society as potential consumer by competitive world managements looms. Promises to world-man of advancement of his standards of living and growth by the competitive managements must be fulfilled.
- e.
- Increasing world population by new birth and increasing longevity with growing actual or potential mobilization of the population and total potential communication and education has accelerated the individual pressures of society—as increased increment of energy accelerates the molecules of gases to exercise further pressure against circumventing systems. Historically, man’s solution of increasing pressure has been linear. He has come to complete the network of total interlinkage of the pressurized centrals. Needing omni-directional dispersion for relief, he has been unable to deploy, other than in a veined or linear manner, as his increasing standards of mechanical advantage have been dependent upon piped, wired, tracked paths.
45 Dynamically speaking, his linear paths are all pipes—his car or his train is a section of pipe surrounding him, which section moves progressively to enclose him—to allow his existence in previously prohibitive environmental extremes. The linear frequencies of a sectional tube increase until the total linear dynamics approach the chain or escalator continuity of the tube. Radial and deploying veinage of the linear tubal expansion encounter geometrically diminishing economy. The dynamic population, increasingly energized from the cosmic resource, finding no relief in inter-center connections and being radially confined, trends to surge within the system with increasing velocity. The only relief for the surges, oscillating outwardly and inwardly, is that of centrally articulated skywardness, as the linear services of pipe and wire can only be economically extended at center. The up-surgings articulate in multiple-story and skyscraper structures until laws of diminishing return again set in. Pressures continue and fill all the static central interstices, designed for intermittent occupations of economic interaction in the fixed hoteling, thus keeping a shuttling population in constant occupation of the facilities. The centrally upward and outward pressures grow finally to articulate omni-directional outwardness by wireless, trackless and pipeless. Potential travel and communication become omnidirectional. Next they become frequency modulated.
46 The surprise interaction of a, b, c, d and e is that scientific dwelling facility suitable for all times and climates, able to deploy the family to high standard living in a preferred location of natural privacy without sacrifice of potential participation in the total complex, is being advanced to first position of priority in the use of the industrial-scientific advantage not only by the military, by the political and by the industrial management, but by rank and file labor and (last, but not least) common man. In the ranks of common man, the clamoring for priority of the scientific dwelling facility and autonomous deployment and, thereby, historical emancipation of man becomes louder among the most recently maturing.
47 The physical key to rapid amplification of the industrial logistic-ability to provide additional deployed dwelling facilities for three billion people within decades, at hitherto undreamed degree of advanced technical standards, is the twofold key that unlocked the door to structuring the initial and total industrial complex. This key is the increasing physical abilities of man as synergetic (associative) and energetic (dissociative) controls.
48 Throughout the ages, man was limited in his structuring to the processing and manipulation only of the compressive functions and components of structure. Stone afforded twenty thousand pounds of compressive strength to the square inch. It was relatively imperishable. The best tensile abilities available in nature were provided by the vegetable fibers—as solid wood or separated fiber. Tensile strength of wood or fiber could not be counted upon for more than five thousand pounds to the square inch. Stone was almost imperishable. The wood and fiber were perishable. Stone and masonry could be counted upon to afford no more than fifty pounds tensile strength to the square inch. Man’s structural ability seemingly favored compressive organizations on a four to one or better basis—width and weight were amplified to increase the stabilities. That his primary philosophic reference was inert and pressive was inevitable.
49 As structural systems are omni-directionally coherent, tensile factors were unwittingly taken advantage of to cohere man’s compressive structures. Comprehensive tensile coherence provided by nature was atomic, the enormous amount of which induced into action was manifested by the weight of the structural masses. The invisible structure was E = mc2.
50 With the coming of modern chemistry, man learned not only to extract but to alloy the metallic elements, in increasing quantity, to progressively reuse them, to progressively augment the sum total of the metals in service by further extraction of the elements from their original invisible aggregate in the matrix of the earth and stone he had so ignorantly employed of yore.
51 With the availability of production metals for building, man’s conscious employment of the tensile factor in his invented structures grew rapidly, both structurally and dynamically. The alloyed and worked iron, called steel, provided tensile ability initially at parity with allowed compressive abilities—twenty thousand pounds to the square inch. Since inauguration of metallic tensioning of structures, the tensile abilities have increased rapidly through chemical knowledge while compression ability has remained at its maximum of fifty thousand pounds. The last quarter century has seen tensile ability moved forward from fifty thousand pounds to the square inch to seventy to eighty to one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty to one hundred eighty-five to four hundred thousand and with no indication of a break in the increasing rate of ability.
52 The enormous increment of energy advantage in the industrial complex has been won directly by the intellectual activity which adduced the principle of tension and its improved rendering by complex industrial heat treatment alloying.
53 Throughout the universe, compression and tension are energetically juxtaposed. Their juxtaposition provides dimension—the basis of awareness of life itself. Compression is limited to dimensionally minuscule tasks in the universe, to the spherical convergences of energy in elemental systems. The tight balls of energy—stars, planets, atoms—are ever-dynamically disposed and systematically positioned by energy as tension. Nonsimultaneous distances of the universe are methodically intercoursed by the incredibly compact ponderosities at incredible speeds and degrees of precision by functions of tension. Tension is comprehensive. Universe tensionally coheres nonsimultaneous events.
54 Man’s structuring ability is by principle distinctly limited in the proportional ratios of width and length of compression members. Elongated compression tends to deflect and fail. The best compression abilities are in the planetary form of the sphere, whose neutral axis is dynamic through omni-directional symmetry. Ball bearings are man’s best accomplishment in compressive structuring.
55 The tensile principle has no such ratioed limit of length to section. Tension members, no matter how elongated, tend to pull true. Tension is limited only to the initial cohesiveness of the chemical elements. As man’s knowledge of chemical interaction improves the length of tensile members, relative to given section diameter or given stress, trends are to increasing amplification—to infinite length with no section. Incredible? No! Every use of gravity is a use of such sectionless tensioning. The electrical tension first employed by man to pull energy through the nonferrous conductors and later to close the wireless circuit was none other than such universally available sectionless tension.
56 In the phenomena tension man is in principle given access to unlimited performance. It seems fantastic, but there it is!
57 The essence of this essence of the historical surprise in general reorientations is the discovery that tension structure is not a linked, or chain, phenomenon. Tension members represent ‘‘milky way-like’’ arrangements of atoms, the atomic or interstellar spaces of which are relatively infinite. The tension members may no longer be thought of as chains, no stronger than their weakest' link. Tension structures arranged by man depend upon his relative knowledge in purest principle—in purest initial volition of interpretation—of pure intellect. Universe is tensional integrity.
58 For nearly fifty years I have made sorties in the realm of mathematics. There has developed therefrom a rational system of mensuration comprehensive to physics and chemistry. It is a geometry originating in the assumption that dimension must be physical. It follows that, inasmuch as physical universe is entirely energetic, all dimension must be energetic. Vectors and tensors constitute all elementary dimension. Thus, original assumptions eliminate the necessity of subsequent assignment of physical qualities to abstract mathematical devices in the manner we have, of necessity, assigned progressively discovered attributes of physical universe to irrational relationships within the a priori ghostly Greek geometry.
59 The degree of new technical advantage provided by the discovered principles may be appreciated by the fact that one pound of structure can hereby accomplish space enclosure heretofore requiring one ton of structure (when complying with the scantiest of U.S. city codes), while at the same time arriving at predictably stable conditions under extreme stress of earthquake, typhoon, arctic cold and tropic heat in the presence of which the behavior of the contemporary city dwelling structure referred to is dubious. This two thousand to one ratio of comparative advantage is made regarding structures of approximately eight thousand square feet of ground coverage. The new structure has been named Geodesic Structure because of its employment of great circle geometry. Geodesics are ‘‘most economical relationships.’’
60 In 1949 the Air Force requested me to erect a small geodesic structure in the courtyard of the Pentagon Building in Washington. Army engineers on seeing it said, ‘‘Why, it is as good as a tent! No, it is better; it can stand stresses a tent cannot!’’ In 1954 the U.S. Marine Corps pronounced air deliverable geodesic structures, ‘‘the first basic improvement in mobile environment controls in twenty-six hundred years.’’ Space research’s imminent solution of closed sanitary human metabolic circuitry—livingry science!
61 We have witnessed a half century’s continuous shrinking of dwelling structures produced at increasing costs per pound and per cubic foot. During the same half century we have seen all the historical outdoor living controls—such as ice house, washing shed, root cellar, water supply and waste disposal—mechanized and brought indoors. To a gradually improving mechanics of solution of these facilities have been added an increasing host of controls and mechanical devices. Cold that required winter’s harvesting and degrees of cold not to be ‘‘harvested’’ are arrived at in minutes and precisely maintained within increasingly economical weight/volume. Functions of the past which required months, weeks, days and hours have been reduced to minutes and seconds, while new degrees of precision of maintenance of desired conditions previously undreamed of are now routine. As an overall result, life expectancy at birth has been almost doubled in this remarkable yet short fifty-year era.
62 While we continuously lost advantage in degrees of structural satisfaction to be obtained per unit of investment (pounds, dollars, time and energy), we have continually gained in degrees of performance to be obtained per unit of investment in household mechanics. For fractions of a cent and ounces of material, we can get instantaneous reports from around the world where the same would have cost thousands of dollars and involved thousands of tons fifty years ago to obtain the same personal home facility.
63 In view of these trends and looking to their further extension in the next fifty years, I propose that we eliminate the shrinking and less economical house altogether and concentrate entirely on amplification of the mechanics. Let’s go camping with paraphernalia competent to make us masters of our environment and time to a degree of which man has never dared to dream.
64 Briefly, I propose a super-camping structure consisting of a six hundred-pound, fifty-foot diameter hemisphere. It consists of a triangular network of aircraft tubing, laced together internally by aircraft cable. Its air frame structure rises into a rigid truss in seconds, as its steel sinews are hydraulically tensed, somewhat as a tinkertoy is drawn taut. A transparent plastic skin of double wall construction is inflated to withstand hail, or hurricane impact loads. An interior shuttering mechanism provides one hundred per cent variable optic control opaque to transparent.
65 Accompanying the geodesic structure will be an autonomous dwelling package. Research regarding this was done in 1949 by forty advanced students in product design and architecture at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Given an hypothetical problem that: all cities of fifty thousand or more population were to be bombed within ten days, they were instructed to compile a household package of all equipment they might conceive of needing for luxurious living. Price was not to be considered; only the best merchandise in any field was to be ‘‘purchased.’’ They shopped all the best sources—Marshall Field’s, Macy’s, Sears, and Wards—for furniture, electrical appliances, radios, cameras, sporting goods shops, garden club machinery, home machine and woodworking shop supplies. Every conceivable area of high standard of living was covered. A tabulation revealed that the whole package of modern mechanics for a family of six cost only eighteen thousand dollars and bulked one thousand six hundred cubic feet and weighed twelve thousand pounds!
66 Because this household machinery and paraphernalia had to be marketed piecemeal with unpredictable lags on shelves and in intermediary warehouses, its cost ran two dollars per pound for its net nine thousand pounds. The same grade of production goods when mass purchased and assembled by the automobile industry with appropriate wiring and plumbing, as are the radio and heater in the automobile, ran fifty cents per pound. Therefore, the total 1949 advanced standard of living package could also be mass produced, purchased, assembled and distributed under a comprehensive chattel mortgage at fifty cents per pound.
67 This may be immediately effected by integration of the electrical appliance and automobile manufacturing industries without inauguration of new components. It involves only modification of what is to be assembled along the production fine. Each of the six surfaces of a 25'x 8'x 8' trailable container will move down the line separately. To them will be affixed all the household items of the super mechanical package. In logical use arrangement and spacing when the panels are hinged together and opened in an eight hundred and sixty-four-foot platform, the arrangement also allows the panels to be hinged into a closed box with intermeshing of the fixed parts. ‘‘A neat trick if you can do it, and we have!’’
68 There were many other problems of water supply and sanitation, but all of these are now under control in an economical manner.
69 You may say, ‘‘What is new about a dome?’’ The answer is that while there is nothing new about a dome, the way that it is accomplished, in this case, represents, first, a new advantage taken of the most recent increases of tensile ability; second, of entirely new structural geometry; and third, of advancing mechanics.
70 Emulating the compound curvature trussing of the atom’s dynamic structure, comprised of great circle forces, our geodesic structure, though not inventing the principles, employs them for the first time in a man-made structure. This was a patentable invention.
71 A barrel represents an advanced phase of the Roman arch or principle of stability accomplished by simple curvature. The parallel barrel staves constitute a ring held together in compression by encompassing tension bands. Thus compression, which tends to curve, is favored in that tendency until the curving line of compression closes itself to thrust against itself. The tension line, which tends to pull true, forms itself in a finite closure of short true chords—because tension members may be flexed while they are in tension without tendency to failure.
72 The tension ends are united to pull against one another. Thus we have closed circuits of tension arch-bundling compression in dynamic stability. Tension lines may also be flexed while under load, without tendency to failure, as a compound corollary of the principle to pull true and the ability to tolerate bending while tensed. Pressures exerted either outside or inside of the barrel result in outward thrust of the staves against the tension members. Thus, the latter absorb the working or random loads.
73 We can also demonstrate the great structural gain inherent in the principle of simple curvature over rectilinear structures when we take a limp sheet of paper and curve it into a tube. Previously, an amorphous diaphragm of little structural advantage, it affords dramatic structural ability in the form of a tube. When the paper is curved, the concave side forms an arch of infinitely minute parallel compression staves, fulcrums of pinched rows of atoms. The convex surface of the curved paper is stretched around the compression arch of parallel fulcrum lines—tensed atoms.
74 The paper may be reversed so that what has been the inside of the cylinder’s surface becomes the outside surface. Thus it is seen that simple curvature structure is a principle and not a unique characteristic of the atoms constituting one surface or the other. The stability of simple curvature is enhanced by the length of the parallel lines. As the lines shorten to approach ‘‘points,’’ the compression of the arch approaches the condition of a simply compressed ball point which then tends to curve in any direction. The curved compression in the barrel or cylinder was confined to articulate its tendency to curvature within one plane by the compression (strutted) positioning of every point of the line of curvature afforded by the parallelism of the staves, and their inertia.
75 Parallel lines can be torqued. So may the parallel lines of a cylinder be twisted as we see them in a rope. A rope and a cone are both forms of simple curvature.
76 When we press against a barrel, the stress is, as earlier noted, satisfied by the tension hoop. Each hoop represents the circle of a single plane. Thus it is seen that simple curvature stresses act in a single plane, ultimately articulating that stress in diametric opposition of a line within the plane. The stresses are then ultimately focused to the infinite poles of parallels, because the latter are unaided in inter-stabilization.
77 In a simple curvature tube of paper, all the circles of tension, including all the circles of compression, are parallel to one another and give one another no help. Therefore, a cylinder may be flattened—in which case each circle becomes a double line. In order to do this, we see that the tension circles exert all their pull in levering the many compression points within to compress exquisitely the two opposite or polar compression points. This is, then, the genesis of the ultimate two-way focusing compression tension line resulting from stressing simple curvature.
78 In our geodesic structures, the surface of a sphere is interlaced by an omni-three-way grid of great circles, which always uniquely intercept one another in such a manner that everywhere the surface areas described by the intersections are triangular. As triangles are non-distortable this intersecting, if substantially structured, represents a rigid trussing of the spherical surface. If, between each of the vertexes or intersections of the great circles occurring in the surface of the sphere, we construct chords or straight lines, these lines must fall below the surface between their surface terminals. The lines converging at any one vertex all leading away below the point on the surface must form a convex intersection or a pyramidal point. As we press against any convex vertex, where the other ends of the lines are elastically restrained, the vertex will subside and the lines will tend to form a flat plane.
79 As each of the chordal ends between vertexes of our geodesic structure is tensionally restrained by the comprehensive trussing of the sphere, it is seen that when pressure is exerted inwardly against any vertex it will thrust outwardly against each of the chords leading radially from it. It will be seen that, inasmuch as each vertex represents a pyramid of triangular planes, the bases of the planes opposite the vertex constitute a closed tensionairing. Because the linkage is of great circle chords and because sections of the great circle always represent the shortest distance between any two points on a sphere (and the chords of the great circle represent the shortest distance between the two points in space through the sphere), the ring of chords tensionally opposing the compression thrust of the pyramidal lines from any one vertex may not be elongated. The vertexes will not subside.
80 Thus it is seen that the geodesic structure employs the principle of compound curvature as the stress is radially distributed from a single point. All the vertexes surrounding any one vertex are secondarily actuated and each in turn thrusts outwardly to adjacent vertexes; rings of triangles of geodesic lines are successively activated from the original thrust against one vertex until six rings have been activated and the equator is reached. All thrusting outwardly against the equator symmetrically, their outward thrust is compoundingly restrained by the opposite hemisphere.
81 In the case of a geodesic structure representing a portion of a sphere, the functions of the balance of the sphere are rendered by the earth, which tends to complete the spherical structure by stress extension within the earth. Thus, in compound curvature structures of Nature, emulated in principle by our geodesic structure, working stresses are ultimately translated into omni-directional outward thrust from the stressed centers, and are ultimately satisfied throughout all the cohesiveness of all the enclosing tension. In contra-distinction to simple curvature, which is ultimately satisfied in polar focus upon two compression points, compound curvature invokes ultimate activation of comprehensive tension.
82 In a compound curvature sphere of paper all the surface represents an inter-triangulation of great circles, wherefore each great circle helps the other. Each is a compression circle enclosed within a tension circle. If we try to flatten the sphere, its equator cannot move outwardly to accommodate the down thrust as did the girth of the paper cylinder. Therefore, no one circle can lever its compressive interior against polar points, and, disunited, fail. In the sphere, the pressure at one point must invoke an infinity of great circles to crush an infinity of points simultaneously in a progressively rolling radius as the sphere is pushed gradually inside out—but never flattened—and only rolls the wave to the equator, which holds. Even in its inside-outness the sphere maintains its comprehensive interaction of system, seeking to re-establish its shape. Thus do balls tend to bounce.
83 There are many ways of rendering geodesic structures, but all represent closed systems in which compression is comprehensively encompassed by tension. In principle, this emulates the structuring of universe.
84 Men have employed geodesic structures in the form of tetrahedrons, octahedrons, and icosahedrons. While useful in small structures, the relative sizes of spans or chords of these well-known continuities of great circle triangulation become so great in unsupported length when applied to structures appropriate to men’s buildings that their virtues were unavailable for practical purposes.
85 The surprise factor in my introduction of geodesic structures is the surprise provided by Nature. We have discovered and not invented all-triangular interaction of twenty-five great circles and thirty-one great circles whose relative chordal lengths make them appropriate for structures up to unlimited diameter.
86 There are further occurrences in greater numbers of great circles embodying the all-triangular interaction. Because of the shortness of the chords, which make possible the application of compression members between vertexes of a practical length-width ratio, while the system of short compression members may be comprehensively cohered by ground-to-ground tension lines, it is now theoretically possible to conceive of structures of spans approximating the great suspension bridges. A dome one mile in diameter appropriately skinned in may, in the future, economically encompass the activity of a city. Such a city would require no weather walls for its individual buildings and yet could be entirely air conditioned.
87 There is special advantage of the hemisphere over other geometrical forms. For instance, the upper or enclosing surface of a hemisphere (geodesic) or of a half cylinder (quonsette) is always twice the area of its base (floor). The upper surface of a half cube structure (typical of one-story box house) is always three times its base (floor). The upper surface of a cube is always five times its base (floor). The above ratios indicate clearly the initial advantages of curved enclosure over rectilinear. The advantage is spelled out in the weight of material per unit of function and in surface cooling areas, etc. The peak-roofed box is at a greater disadvantage than the flat-roofed box. The dome sheds its snow and rain in a superior fashion to a peak or a cylinder.
88 While it is customary to identify office and manufacturing space in terms of square feet of floor area, the actual fact is that—because man and his goods are not two dimensional—the space is volumetrically employed. For this reason, the unique advantages displayed by the sphere (as dimension is amplified) in the rate of volumetric increase as of the third power over surface increase at the rate of the second power has direct bearing on use.
89 It may be argued that the hemisphere provides unusable heights of volume and, therefore, the floor area is a better means of appraising the value of the space, but this aspect is only true under special forms of use which emphasize the ground need. Storagewise, the whole of the hemispherical volume can be employed. In the case of our geodesic housing where a fifty-foot hemisphere is employed, we find it appropriate to create a second deck. Geodesic domes eliminate interior columns.
90 Further uses are made of the hemispherical volume which take advantage of the unique geometry of the hemisphere; that is, atmospheric circulation takes advantage of the natural fountainwise flow of heated air (for air heated at the center tends to expand and rise as the heavier air is pulled down by gravity). As it rises it further expands; it cools and flows outward and downward to floor level, then recenters for reheating and recirculation.
91 This natural fountain motion of heated air may be observed as an isolated phenomena in the case of explosions and in great fires. Notably, the Bikini bomb may be remembered as demonstrating the upward-outward-downward and center-rolling doughnut-hemispherical shape. Inasmuch as this is the natural atmospheric circuit of energy as heat, it is seen that—if the hemisphere is designed of the right size to accommodate the natural dimensions of a given heat fountain—there is no tendency of heat to be lost nor additional energy expended to impel atmospheric flows through unnatural chambering in order to distribute ‘‘comfort’’ atmosphere. This pattern reverses and cools in summer.
92 The hemisphere has further advantages relative to the phenomenon energy-as-heat-in-the-form-of-radiation (in contra-distinction to energy-as-heat-as-articulation-by-molecular-acceleration in gases, which latter is commonly identified by the combined behaviors known as conduction and convection). Energy-as-radiation (heat or light or radio) is refracted by the atmosphere. The lumen reduction as the light meter recedes from the source of light is rapid. As the longer waves of light radiation are progressively deflected by air molecules, they tend to turn back on themselves. This atmospheric deflection effect on radiation may be witnessed by observation of a street lamp in a mist, in which it is seen that a unique sphere is illuminated, and that only a small fraction of the high frequency and shortest wave light penetrates to the distant eye.
93 The long infrared radiation is turned about most rapidly and forms a relatively small sphere around the heat-light source. We demonstrate our familiarity with heat radiations’ spherical limits as we back into and walk away from the glowing fireplace. The spherical surfaces of relative heat ‘‘fronts’’ are well identified. Again, as in the case of convection fountain enclosure, it is seen that, if a structural hemisphere is of adequate size, heat losses by radiation (where the origin of heat is near the center of the hemisphere) may be scaled down to negligible, and that such heat radiation as does reach the surface may be turned around by reflection and thrown directly back toward the point of origin.
94 There is a third aspect of unique advantage in the matter of hemispherical volume, gained at the third power, against surface growth of the second power; to wit, that advantage accruing to ‘‘relative size.’’ Relative size very naturally affects heat balance because extreme chilling by conduction occurs in direct relationship to the second power surface, while the heat is being impounded by the air mass growing at the third power. A large, heated sphere such as earth can maintain high internal heat without important challenge by the exterior cooling surface. A large internal combustion engine cylinder cools off slowly in comparison to a small combustion cylinder (large diesel vs. small motorcycle). In reverse, the principle of relative size effect may be noted in the relatively slow velocity at which a large cake of ice melts, as against the accelerating velocity at which a small cake of ice melts—icebergs and glaciers vs. snowflakes.
95 The principle of relative size effects may be observed where heat is no consideration; for instance, in the relative rate of dissolution of several small cakes of soap vs. one large cake of soap of equal total weight. The principle is exhibited by a steel needle floating on water vs. a solid steel rod sinking.
96 Because the amount of volume that can encompass a given center for a given amount of pounds of structure is larger in the case of the sphere vs. any other kind of geometrical form, and because our particular type of tube-and-cable ‘‘necklace’’ structure (which takes advantage of triangulation of geodesic lines) entitles us to the encompassment of relatively large volumes with relatively low logistic investment, optimum conditions obtain. Slackened necklace geodesic spheres, compactable as tight as hairnets, may be shot to the moon and tensibly self-motor opened.
97 There is a further advantage unique to this geometrical form not at first anticipated, and that is the exterior aeronautical advantage. The hemisphere provides the least resistant form (to the sum total of omni-directional air motions about it) of any of the geometrical forms. (For this reason, haymows do not tend to deform in the wind.) The wind tunnel discloses that interior heat losses of permeable wall structures are proportional to drag. This is to say that the exterior low pressures created by the passage of air about a structure are satisfied by interiorly generated energy expenditure to pass the high pressure gases through the permeable passages of walls of the structure. Geodesic domes optimally withstand nearby atomic bomb shock impacts.
98 Other experiments have disclosed these principles to be in operation. Cubical houses heated by return circuit hot water systems have been mistakenly supposed to be cool in the windward rooms in the wintertime because the wind was blowing on that side and was, therefore, supposedly chilling the radiators in the windward rooms. Experiments disclose that no heat rises from the boiler to the windward rooms because the total B.T.U.’s being generated are required to process the transfer of the heated atmosphere in the lee side of the building through the walls to satisfy the low pressure occurring in the lee exterior of the building and that the whole heat flow is to the lee side.
99 It can be seen that the four factors noted above—a.) heat convection fountain, b.) radiation refraction to spherical shape, c) relative size, d.) aeronautical properties—combine to provide unique energy economies, but with no further expenditure in physical structure in the way of conduits, partitions or impellers thus displaying surprise advantage in new magnitudes of available low cost and low upkeep controlled environment.
100 Employing components now manufactured by American industry, one of our engineering research teams has now completed a tentative flow sheet of the sewage disposal and water supply system—the latter for six hundred gallons per day of chemically pure, sterilized, sweet water. This apparatus serves as an exchanger, taking heat from light and refrigeration systems to satisfy the pressure distillation processes. It heats the water for general cleansing purposes while shunting a fraction to refrigeration for chilling. This total energy-sanitation-refrigeration system weighs approximately one ton.
101 Autonomous living under a hurricane-proof hemispherical enclosure of fifty-foot diameter (eight hundred sixty-four square feet of platform plus nine hundred eighty-six square feet of interior garden), with all modern super-luxury appurtenances and sanitary controls, is now feasible. Weighing in toto fourteen thousand pounds, it may be mass produced at $7,000. Push button-erected, it may be occupied at one fifth the present cost of bare miniature-mansions sewered and paved together in ‘‘Siamese twinness.’’ This can be realized only through true mass production.