Word: tetrahedrons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...window on high-frequency beams." Divining that the compression and tension factors can be separated in any structure, he has designed a "tensegrity mast" that seems to be held up by nothing at all. But Fuller insists that with this mast combined with his frame of tetrahedron-octahedron combinations which he calls the "octet truss," he could bridge the Grand Canyon itself...
...helping to raise man's living standard still higher, and at a faster rate, Fuller has devoted his life to inventing construction systems of extreme economic efficiency, and to applying these to "livingry" rather than "weaponry." Perhaps his greatest contribution in this respect has been his work with the tetrahedron, a four-faced pyramid which Fuller has discovered to be the most resistant of all polyhedra to external pressure. By combining many tetrahedra into a spherical shape (the sphere can withstand the greatest internal pressures), Fuller constructed his geodesic dome, an extremely light and economical structure of extraordinary strength...
Originator of the geodesic dome and the mass-produceable Dymaxion house, Fuller bases his more efficient architecture on his discovery that the tetrahedron (a pyramid composed of four triangles) has extraordinarily great synergetic force. If one takes six rods and constructs them into a tetrahedron, the strength of the whole is far greater than the sum of the strength of its parts...
...tetrahedron frequently appears in nature: the spatial orientation of a carbon atom's valence electrons, for example, is tetrahedral. Fuller also noted that all three-dimensional geometric figures reduce to combinations of tetrahedra. The tetrahedron, in fact, "is the minimum system for subdividing the universe...