Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. Hey I'm Christian Seger,
Speaker 1: and in this episode we're gonna talk about the work
Speaker 1: of our Buckminster Fuller. Yeah, this guy was a real visionary,
Speaker 1: primarily influential between the nineteen thirties and fifties. You may
Speaker 1: have heard of him as a maybe an engineer or
Speaker 1: a designer, or sometimes as an architect. He really wasn't
Speaker 1: any of those things. Technically, he didn't have the training necessarily.
Speaker 1: But what he was was a major symbol for counterculture
Speaker 1: and influencing people to be creative. I think that's fair
Speaker 1: to say. Yeah, yeah, as we researched him, and this
Speaker 1: was a guy that I didn't know a lot about.
Speaker 1: I mean, I grew up seeing the diodestic Dome. You
Speaker 1: know some of the edific doum houses near where I lived.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I didn't know that. Well there was one.
Speaker 1: I say that as if there was a whole there,
Speaker 1: but there was one up on the hill and there
Speaker 1: where where my my parents lived. I always tried to
Speaker 1: imagine what's going on, and yeah, yeah, well I think
Speaker 1: I must have heard of him the first time when
Speaker 1: I went to Epcot Center, because I believe that the
Speaker 1: what do they call it Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center
Speaker 1: is is a geodesic sphere. I believe it's based on
Speaker 1: the principles. I don't think that Fuller was involved in
Speaker 1: constructing it, but but yeah, but certainly the gudesic dome,
Speaker 1: the guidestic sphere serves as a symbol for him. It's
Speaker 1: this uh uh, the inspiration of what can be done
Speaker 1: with engineering and ingenuity. Yeah, and and I think that's
Speaker 1: very very stuff to blow your mind in terms of
Speaker 1: how much this show has covered retro futurist kind of
Speaker 1: aesthetics or engineering principles, ideas imagination in the past. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, and so much of what's appealing about Fuller
Speaker 1: is that he the audacity of some of his ideas,
Speaker 1: Like some of the other visionaries that we've we've touched
Speaker 1: on the show before and we'll touch on in the future.
Speaker 1: You know, he really he really thought outside the box.
Speaker 1: To use a very cliche term, he didn't he didn't
Speaker 1: have all the filters that that that a lot of
Speaker 1: us have been trying to envision what we can do
Speaker 1: with technology and what the future could consist of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and my take on this, So I went into this
Speaker 1: episode being a fan of our Buck Muster Fuller being
Speaker 1: very excited about, in particular the Cloud nine ideas which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, which are basically flying cities. Um and
Speaker 1: I had even written about him for How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: before and then really doing a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: research about him, and in particular there's an article uh
Speaker 1: in The New Yorker that came out in two thousand
Speaker 1: eight that's called the di Maxian Man, and it's by
Speaker 1: a woman named Elizabeth Colbert. Uh not Colbert. I believe
Speaker 1: it's Colbert because it's got okay, but um uh, it
Speaker 1: really highlighted his life beyond just the you know, the
Speaker 1: the big ideas that this guy came up with, and
Speaker 1: I think that of him now more along the lines
Speaker 1: of this generation of men who were big thinkers, but
Speaker 1: we're also sort of con artists in a way. Joe
Speaker 1: is not going to be delighted to know Joe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for those of you who know are our third host,
Speaker 1: Joe is a a big buck Mr. Fuller fan has
Speaker 1: also written about him. But but I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: convince him. Hopefully he'll listen to this and I'll change
Speaker 1: his mind. So why don't we start just talking about that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call him Bucky Buckminster. I think is gonna
Speaker 1: be a little bit too much, and Mr Fuller seems
Speaker 1: formal for where we're at, So let's call him Bucky.
Speaker 1: That's what his friends and family called him. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was born on July twelve in Milton, Massachusetts, which I'm
Speaker 1: familiar with from the Boston area. Uh. And he died
Speaker 1: on July one, in nine three in l a um.
Speaker 1: He this is like right out of the gate like this,
Speaker 1: This story of him as a little kid, I think
Speaker 1: perfectly streets what kind of a human being he grew
Speaker 1: up into. So he was nearsighted as a child, so
Speaker 1: was I. I stared wearing glasses when I was five,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't until he was actually fitted with glasses,
Speaker 1: like his parents convinced him, Hey, you need glasses. He
Speaker 1: didn't believe that the world wasn't blurry. He thought the
Speaker 1: whole world was blurry because that's how he saw it.
Speaker 1: So I know I presented that as a double negative.
Speaker 1: So he thought the world was blurry, and when they
Speaker 1: said to him, no, you have something wrong with your eyes,
Speaker 1: he didn't believe them until somebody actually put glasses on
Speaker 1: his head and he realized, Oh, this is how I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to see the world. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: perfect metaphor for this guy's life as it goes on. Basically,
Speaker 1: I mean, I see some of that in my my
Speaker 1: own toddler. To say that he's gonna, you know, grow
Speaker 1: up to be such an iconic figure, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be surper. But there's a stubbornness at times to to
Speaker 1: a kid. You know, they think they know how the
Speaker 1: world works, and they don't. They don't accept the counter
Speaker 1: argument that you present them with. But but maybe that's
Speaker 1: part of a Fuller's vibe. And why I resonate so
Speaker 1: much is because he kept that that kind of childish
Speaker 1: vision and assuredness. Yeah, yeah, I think you might be right.
Speaker 1: Well here's another thing. Tell me if your son does
Speaker 1: this yet? Okay, okay buck. Mr Fuller constantly collected throughout
Speaker 1: his entire life scrap books of his letters, articles, everything
Speaker 1: as a record of his life. This included receipts for
Speaker 1: everything like dry cleaning, bills and we have all of
Speaker 1: this today. He actually referred to it later on as
Speaker 1: the Dymaxion Chronophile. He loved coming up with weird names
Speaker 1: for things. Now that sounds a lot more impressive until
Speaker 1: you realize it has like laundry receipts in it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so is um is your son keeping a Dymaxian chronofile.
Speaker 1: He has a box of rocks. He comes home every
Speaker 1: day with like six different rocks in his pockets. So
Speaker 1: sort of an early early stage. Well, I could see
Speaker 1: them keeping that in an archive someday, and that's what
Speaker 1: they did with with Fuller. Actually, uh, it weighs forty
Speaker 1: five tons this guy's archives. So I used to work
Speaker 1: in an academic library and work a lot with archivists
Speaker 1: and special collections, and forty five tons is a lot.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of material. It's the largest personal archive
Speaker 1: that's currently at Stanford University. So I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's basically everything this guy ever wrote down to paper
Speaker 1: he thought was going to be important in some way
Speaker 1: and kept a copy of it um And and it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of fascinating, Like I think about other
Speaker 1: figures throughout history who even at a young age, were
Speaker 1: convinced that whatever they had was going to be so
Speaker 1: important that one day mankind was going to need to
Speaker 1: go look back upon these papers, you know, even when
Speaker 1: you're a child. Theodore Roosevelt was a guy like this,
Speaker 1: kept kept a log of pretty much everything he did. Um.
Speaker 1: And that also, I think there's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: narcissism that comes into play there, I would think, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, and yeah, we definitely see that with with Fuller,
Speaker 1: and that he's from a from an early point keeping
Speaker 1: keeping a file, a holy document of what he is
Speaker 1: setting out with a chief. Yeah. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's the basics of what we have of him
Speaker 1: as a child. But like many people and his family,
Speaker 1: mostly men, Uh, he went to Harvard University. Unfortunately, halfway
Speaker 1: through his freshman year, he took his tuition money and
Speaker 1: he took it out of the bank and he said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to use this to entertain chorus girls in Manhattan. Uh.
Speaker 1: Story goes that Harvard wasn't pleased about this. He was expelled.
Speaker 1: A year later, they reinstated him, and then he got
Speaker 1: thrown out again. We don't know why. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: chorus girls again who knows. But the gist of it
Speaker 1: is that Bucking never graduated from any college. He doesn't
Speaker 1: have a degree in engineering. He um, he really you know,
Speaker 1: from what it sounds like, he was a book learning man,
Speaker 1: you know, um, which is which is fine, but I think,
Speaker 1: like when you see some of the large scale projects
Speaker 1: he was hired for later on based on his hotspa,
Speaker 1: it makes you, it makes you wonder. Um. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so after this whole Harvard thing collapsed for him, he
Speaker 1: went on, he took a meatpacking job, then he joined
Speaker 1: the Navy. When he was in the Navy, this is
Speaker 1: when he really started his whole like invention kick, right.
Speaker 1: So he uh, he invented this device to rescue pilots
Speaker 1: that had like you know, crashed at sea. And um,
Speaker 1: what what ended up happening was this device often just
Speaker 1: flipped them upside down and dunked them head first into
Speaker 1: the water and held them under water. Right. Well you
Speaker 1: know it it expedites the process, but it's just not
Speaker 1: in the way, not the way I think the Navy
Speaker 1: was looking at. Um. And then you know, after World
Speaker 1: War rather during World War One, he got married and
Speaker 1: he started a business with his wife's father, His wife's
Speaker 1: father was an architect, and so I think that this
Speaker 1: is where he you know, picked up a lot of
Speaker 1: his nol but that the two of them started this
Speaker 1: business together where they manufactured books out of wood shavings.
Speaker 1: And I was trying to imagine what this even meant.
Speaker 1: It's it's one thing to read that as a sentence
Speaker 1: in an article. I don't know what does that mean.
Speaker 1: They took the wood shavings and they they like pulped
Speaker 1: them down. I guess it certainly makes me think of
Speaker 1: sort of you know, homemade paper craft nowadays. But well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine. But the company went almost bankrupt
Speaker 1: and uh then somebody bought it from the two of them.
Speaker 1: In so at this point, this is this is an
Speaker 1: interesting point in Buckey's life. Uh, and by different accounts
Speaker 1: from what I read, Uh, it's acknowledged differently. Even stories
Speaker 1: say that, like their interviews with his daughter saying this
Speaker 1: what I'm about to tell you is is probably fictional. Basically,
Speaker 1: he comes to a crossroads in his life. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, literally, like he his daughter was born. Um,
Speaker 1: he claimed that at the time he became really depressed
Speaker 1: because he didn't have a job. He couldn't provide for
Speaker 1: his family. So he he was on a walk, and
Speaker 1: he was walking alongside Lake Michigan, and he had suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 1: And so some versions of this story say that he
Speaker 1: claims suddenly he was suspended several feet above the air,
Speaker 1: above the ground rather in the air, and saw light
Speaker 1: and he heard a voice say, you do not have
Speaker 1: the right to eliminate yourself. And then it said you
Speaker 1: do not belong to you, You belong to the universe. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I presumably he was set back down and
Speaker 1: he had this epiphany that this was a sign that
Speaker 1: he should start a lifelong experiment uh, where basically he
Speaker 1: should figure out how one person himself could benefit all
Speaker 1: of humanity, could change all of humanity for the better.
Speaker 1: And this is where he really started hitting the books, right,
Speaker 1: hanging out in library, he's compiling notes and really trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how he can transform the world. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here again, so he's keeping like documentation of all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Right. So, rather than you get a
Speaker 1: job and support his family, he goes to the library.
Speaker 1: He refers to himself in the third person as guinea
Speaker 1: pig b presumably be is Bucky uh and he starts
Speaker 1: writing this booklet that he called The for d Timelock.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. From what I understood, it's apparently quite
Speaker 1: hard to read. It's it's a the reviews rather of
Speaker 1: it where that it was you know, the pros was dense,
Speaker 1: it was it barely made any sense. But essentially it's
Speaker 1: a diet tribe about how we were failing at that
Speaker 1: time in how we constructed modern homes and how we
Speaker 1: were basically like real estate and construction. Um. And he
Speaker 1: felt like this was this was how he was going
Speaker 1: to impact human He was going to change production basically
Speaker 1: of home life. And this comes along at a at
Speaker 1: a at a key point too, because we're seeing in
Speaker 1: this industrialized world, we're seeing these uh, these sort of
Speaker 1: cookie cutter designs roll out in the world around us,
Speaker 1: but we're also seeing futuristic visions of what's possible showing
Speaker 1: up in our our science fiction and advertising and uh
Speaker 1: and and and Bucky's ideas kind of serve as a
Speaker 1: as a bridge to that. Yeah, I think that's important
Speaker 1: to remember is that, like there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people at that time who were having amazing imaginative ideas
Speaker 1: really that you know, I think that um formed what
Speaker 1: we think of today as sort of our science fiction
Speaker 1: fantasy uh conventions, I guess, right, like the aesthetics behind that.
Speaker 1: And Fuller, Bucky rather sort of thought of himself not
Speaker 1: you know, he wasn't in the fictional space. He saw
Speaker 1: this as no, that this is how we're going to
Speaker 1: change the real world, no matter how unrealistic it was
Speaker 1: or even as we'll find out later that he came
Speaker 1: up with ideas for things that hadn't been invented yet.
Speaker 1: So his excuse for why he couldn't construct things was, well,
Speaker 1: the materials aren't here. Yeah, sorry, this doesn't actually exist,
Speaker 1: so I can't make it yet. Yeah. I mean he was,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people at the time, riding that
Speaker 1: wave of technological optimism where it seemed that all these
Speaker 1: things would definitely come to fruition and uh and so
Speaker 1: he's just sort of dreaming, dreaming ahead of that wave crashing. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: So i'd like before we get into the first of
Speaker 1: his his large, uh you know, scale inventions, here's a
Speaker 1: couple other notes about him, just so we've we've got
Speaker 1: a framework of Buck Mr Fuller as a man. Uh So,
Speaker 1: later on in his life, after he gained some notoriety.
Speaker 1: He was an academic uh and reportedly he could lecture
Speaker 1: for ten hours at a time. UH, and that if
Speaker 1: you had class with him, they lasted from nine am
Speaker 1: until five pm. And this was not like the kind
Speaker 1: of like a seminar where you broke out in a
Speaker 1: group sessions and you were interacting with your classmates. Fuller
Speaker 1: spoke the entire time. He basically just shared at people
Speaker 1: for eight to ten hours at a time. But he
Speaker 1: was very charismatics. I presumably this is it's not as
Speaker 1: dreary attend it's as much as ten hour lecture. I
Speaker 1: get the impression that people weren't falling asleep, that it
Speaker 1: was a spectacle to behold. Um. Of course, he believed
Speaker 1: all the world's problems could be solved by technology. That's
Speaker 1: basically the philosophy behind a lot of what he saw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he also proposed a clear dome be constructed over Manhattan,
Speaker 1: a tetra head drawn suburb in San Francisco Bay, and
Speaker 1: he patented a scheme for an underwater city. So he's
Speaker 1: really thinking about I guess, like what we would call
Speaker 1: today urban studies, right like he was, he was thinking
Speaker 1: about cities as microcosms of people and how we could
Speaker 1: put them elsewhere, whether that be the sky, underwater. I
Speaker 1: don't know why Manhattan would need a dome, but I
Speaker 1: think this is something that's caught on in fiction because
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen it in a lot of
Speaker 1: other Yeah, it definitely shows up in Futurama. There's a
Speaker 1: really at some point the city of New York is
Speaker 1: uh is covered in a dome. I don't recall exactly why,
Speaker 1: but but it does happen. Yeah, maybe like acid rain
Speaker 1: or something like that, although I don't know that that
Speaker 1: was what his thinking was. Um, here's another interesting thing
Speaker 1: about him. So, while he did believe that technology was
Speaker 1: the you know, saving grace for all of humanity, he
Speaker 1: didn't believe in evolution. What he actually thought were that
Speaker 1: human beings had come from another part of the universe,
Speaker 1: like another planet, uh, totally as we are right now,
Speaker 1: and populated the planet Earth like somebody dropped us off here. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also thought that dolphins were descendants from these like
Speaker 1: proto humans that came to Earth and that they had
Speaker 1: like become seafaring proto humans and eventually turned into dolphins.
Speaker 1: I bet he. I wonder if you ever met up
Speaker 1: with John C. Lily. They definitely lived at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you were telling me about Lily earlier, So I
Speaker 1: think that, Um, he sounds like somebody who should definitely
Speaker 1: talk about on the show, which I think we should
Speaker 1: do a full episode on literally at some point, because
Speaker 1: he's a fascinating dude and we've only we've only really
Speaker 1: touched on some of his uh crazier ideas here on
Speaker 1: the show in the past, and there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to him than that. Well, well, we'll save that for
Speaker 1: another episode. But here's the last thing I'll give you
Speaker 1: on Bucky. This is one of my favorites before we
Speaker 1: get into the diet Dymaxian inventions that he had. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: for many years, Bucky had a very specific diet and
Speaker 1: there are only a few things he would eat and
Speaker 1: they consisted of prunes, tea, steak, and jello. Those were
Speaker 1: like his four food groups. Prunes, tea, steak, and jello. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: I I think you'd have to put a lot of
Speaker 1: different things into that jello to really make that diet work.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to imagine. I know that there's a
Speaker 1: recipe and I may be taking us off track here,
Speaker 1: But isn't there something like where you there's like a
Speaker 1: mold of jello where you embed other food products inside
Speaker 1: the jello, like and suspended animation. Yeah, like a little
Speaker 1: bits of fruit. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, But in his case,
Speaker 1: it would just be like prunes and and steak, like
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, he just had this one thing that he
Speaker 1: would eat every day. Yeah yeah, yeah. I mean, because
Speaker 1: he was very utilitarian, you want to make it as
Speaker 1: simple as possible. Okay, So with this gives you an
Speaker 1: idea of what kind of a person Fuller was he.
Speaker 1: Like I said earlier, he liked to make up words
Speaker 1: of his own. So this leads us to his favorite
Speaker 1: word that he made up. But he didn't make it up, actually,
Speaker 1: but it was made up maxian. Uh. There was a
Speaker 1: consultant who was working to sell model homes and they
Speaker 1: came up with it. And it's a mash of three
Speaker 1: words that they thought sounded exciting at the time, dynamic
Speaker 1: maximum and ion is good is good marketing maxion? Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd buy that. But it's perfect for Fuller, right, because
Speaker 1: so so many of these ideas are are about the
Speaker 1: marketing of the dream, not so much about the realization
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, I think if he were alive today,
Speaker 1: he would very much be like the kind of mad
Speaker 1: men that would that would work in advertising or marketing
Speaker 1: or just do a lot of Ted talks. May definitely
Speaker 1: he would be a Ted talker for sure, You're right.
Speaker 1: Uh so. So he took this word dymaxie and he
Speaker 1: just applied it to a lot of his you know,
Speaker 1: invention ideas. Um. The first one was the Dymaxion vehicle.
Speaker 1: So this was a car that had three wheels, there
Speaker 1: were two in the front, one in the back, and
Speaker 1: instead of a rear view mirror, it had a periscope.
Speaker 1: I tried imagining how that would work. So you're you
Speaker 1: would like, what, lean over and put your eye in
Speaker 1: the periscope to see behind you? I guess so. But
Speaker 1: of course it's that's not really two different from what
Speaker 1: we have now with the rear view video, right. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's true. Yeah, I've never driven a car
Speaker 1: with one of those before, but yeah, it works, you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately not too different from a periscope. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give him, I'm gonna give a break pass on that. Well,
Speaker 1: apparently this car was really good for for like, you know,
Speaker 1: odd parking maneuvers. So if you're the kind of person
Speaker 1: who has trouble parallel parking, I think the Dymaxian vehicle
Speaker 1: was for you, and it was apparently very good at
Speaker 1: degree turns. Uh. But it caused a lot of controversy
Speaker 1: when it was first introduced. The very first time you
Speaker 1: put it out on the road in nine three, there
Speaker 1: was so much hype and people were so surprised by
Speaker 1: seeing it on the road that it caused gridlock. That
Speaker 1: people just weren't driving because they were up staring at
Speaker 1: this thing. Yeah, I can definitely understand. I mean I
Speaker 1: I I feel like when I see a vehicle that's
Speaker 1: particularly futuristic driving around town here in Atlanta, and it
Speaker 1: throws me off for a minute and I almost wrecked
Speaker 1: the car. Yeah. In fact, there's somebody near the office here.
Speaker 1: I see him coming in and out of the Whole
Speaker 1: Foods parking lot in some sort I don't even know
Speaker 1: what you call them these days, but it has to
Speaker 1: two wheels in the front and one in the back.
Speaker 1: Really it's kind of vehicle. Oh, now I'm curious. You
Speaker 1: know who we should ask about this? As the car
Speaker 1: stuff guys, would I wonder, Yeah, yeah, I I even
Speaker 1: considered asking them if they had already covered the Dymaxine vehicle.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if they have or not, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure Scott's heard of it before. Um So, Fuller basically
Speaker 1: envisioned that this vehicle would go beyond the three wheel
Speaker 1: model that he had built. He wanted it to fly.
Speaker 1: He wanted basically, he wanted everything he made to fly.
Speaker 1: That was kind of his thing. Um. But he he
Speaker 1: thought it would be kind of like a duck the
Speaker 1: way that it would take off, uh, And that it
Speaker 1: would also be built in such a way so that
Speaker 1: like when it was on land, it could travel on
Speaker 1: the roughest roads, but then when there was terrain that
Speaker 1: you couldn't necessarily get over with you know, the three
Speaker 1: wheels on on the Dymaxine vehicle, it would just take
Speaker 1: off and fly over the stuff. Um he. So here's
Speaker 1: what happened with the Dymaxine vehicle. They built one prototype
Speaker 1: and as this one that caused the grid block. I
Speaker 1: believe three months after it was released, it crashed. The
Speaker 1: driver was killed, the one of the passengers was seriously injured.
Speaker 1: But later on and they determined. I believe it was
Speaker 1: at like a World's Fair that this happened or something
Speaker 1: similar to that, like one of these big exhibitions of technology. Uh,
Speaker 1: they determined another car was found responsible for the accident,
Speaker 1: and they only produced two more of these, and then
Speaker 1: the whole thing was just put on hold because you know,
Speaker 1: it's just it was again like many of his ideas,
Speaker 1: it was a it was a cool idea, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly practical or functional. Yeah, as a as an
Speaker 1: inspiration and as an argument, it totally works because it's
Speaker 1: it's Bucky saying, Hey, why does a car have to
Speaker 1: be this? Let's think outside of the timeline so far.
Speaker 1: Let's think about what is what's possible, and not just
Speaker 1: what we have to work with. But when you start actually,
Speaker 1: you know, putting a tire to the road, Uh, it
Speaker 1: doesn't always work out. And I imagine that like the
Speaker 1: investors involved, you know, he must have had to have
Speaker 1: he must have been a very charming man in order
Speaker 1: to convince people to put their money into these projects. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that leads us to the next Dymaxion invention,
Speaker 1: which was the Dymaxion house. So that, like like the
Speaker 1: car and some of the other stuff we're gonna see
Speaker 1: you later on. He very much had this idea I
Speaker 1: think of like everything being kind of like uh, what
Speaker 1: we would refer to now as plug in play right right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you buy it and it's just right out of the box,
Speaker 1: good to go. And so that's what he wanted this
Speaker 1: house to be. It was something that you could erect
Speaker 1: in one day, totally complete. Like I think furniture and
Speaker 1: definitely appliances were all built into the structure and they
Speaker 1: just sort of like unfold and be there. He called
Speaker 1: it drudge y proof. I don't know what that necessarily
Speaker 1: meant other than that, like maybe he thought it would
Speaker 1: be aesthetically pleasing when the roll of building up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I guess that's true. Yeah, I thought more of
Speaker 1: that it was like the drudgery of everyday life, you
Speaker 1: know that that there was something about the home that
Speaker 1: would kind of put a little spring in your step. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean as as a homeown, right does like that
Speaker 1: the home comes to you kind of broken, even if
Speaker 1: even if you had to build the damn thing, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's in a constant state of breaking. So this
Speaker 1: is uh, and you're having to repair it and then
Speaker 1: so maybe the drudgery free home. It's just simply this this,
Speaker 1: like if you're microwave of breaks, you just buy a
Speaker 1: new home. Yeah yeah, I think the complete modular home
Speaker 1: is a complete insert. It's just if you're this one's broken,
Speaker 1: well great, just tear tear the fresh strip off the
Speaker 1: new one, plug it into your lot, and you're good
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's how he was thinking.
Speaker 1: I mean, it only really made it to sketch stages
Speaker 1: and at the beginning, what he envisioned was that there
Speaker 1: are these ultra lightweight towers and that they would be
Speaker 1: assembled at a particular location. I guess there would be
Speaker 1: like a factory or something or they're making these, and
Speaker 1: then they would have Zeppelin's transport them around the world.
Speaker 1: I love that that detail of it. Yes, it's it's
Speaker 1: just go ahead and throw airships in there, like like
Speaker 1: every every idea that he has is is tailor made
Speaker 1: for one of those old popular science covers, right yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is straight out of like a pulp pulp
Speaker 1: novel from the thirties two, Like like the way that
Speaker 1: they would excavate this didn't actually happen, but theoretically they
Speaker 1: would excavate sites to place these homes and by just
Speaker 1: you know, dropping bombs from the zeppelin. Just drop a
Speaker 1: small bomb, just a small one, blow up the area,
Speaker 1: flatten it out, and then you could put your dimaxi
Speaker 1: in home down. Yeah again, just completely thinking outside of
Speaker 1: existing context. You know, why not why can't we dig
Speaker 1: a hole in a neighborhood by the use of smart bomb, Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and then just drop it, drop the house in there.
Speaker 1: From his I wouldn't be surprised if it came back
Speaker 1: around again, you know, with the at least here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: with the way real estates are, real estate prices are going,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just yeah, we'll just drop a bomb,
Speaker 1: knocked down the whole neighborhood and then put a bunch
Speaker 1: of these. That's basically what does happen. You know when
Speaker 1: you when you think about these like a live work
Speaker 1: play units that go up in like a year, you know,
Speaker 1: they're just really quickly built. Maybe he did inspire some
Speaker 1: some engineers and architects. So the second version of this,
Speaker 1: this is the one that that ended up like being built,
Speaker 1: was it was shaped like a hexagon and it was
Speaker 1: made out of stamped metal and it was suspended on
Speaker 1: a mast. The mast this way I'm envisioning it was
Speaker 1: like this was sort of like a telephone pole maybe. Um.
Speaker 1: And this mask contained all the wiring and plumbing and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Today that's where we'd have our you know,
Speaker 1: internet chords and stuff like that. Uh. And then when
Speaker 1: a family moved, they would just disassemble the house uh
Speaker 1: and pack it up and move it with them. It
Speaker 1: would it basically like another piece of furniture or something
Speaker 1: like that. Um. And he really only built the scale
Speaker 1: model that was exhibited in There was no full sized
Speaker 1: version ever built because Fuller said the components weren't made yet.
Speaker 1: There was you know, the stuff didn't exist yet. I
Speaker 1: think it went beyond just like the stamped metal and
Speaker 1: and the structure of the thing. I think he was
Speaker 1: thinking along the lines of sort of science fiction e
Speaker 1: type technology that would come as part of this home, uh,
Speaker 1: stuff that we probably considered you know normal nowadays, like
Speaker 1: you know, entertainment center or something like that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, you could of course say the same
Speaker 1: thing for the the Zeppelin's and the bomb dropping, right
Speaker 1: if you could say that, well, technology just wasn't there yet,
Speaker 1: and still wasn't there yet enough to where we would trust,
Speaker 1: say a drone to deliver an explosive device to a
Speaker 1: neighborhood or you know, or or be able to adequately
Speaker 1: deliver things via some sort of you know, a drone
Speaker 1: Zeppelin scenario. So okay, so he didn't have the materials.
Speaker 1: Then we're talking this is like late thirties. I think, um,
Speaker 1: we probably do now. Uh So is this feasible? Is
Speaker 1: this something that we could do today? Well? I think
Speaker 1: one of the big things is that it is Fuller
Speaker 1: is very much rebelling against existing notions of what we
Speaker 1: should have, and he's saying, what what can we have?
Speaker 1: What we can what can we create that will fulfill
Speaker 1: those needs? When clearly we're the rest of us that
Speaker 1: the non BUCkies out there are are mostly tied to
Speaker 1: tradition too strongly to say, you know what, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to live in a house. I'm not even gonna
Speaker 1: live in a modern house. I'm gonna live in some
Speaker 1: sort of space age tent that I fold up and
Speaker 1: take with me when I move. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: you occasionally see these like kind of articles in science
Speaker 1: magazines where it's like, hey, look at this this home
Speaker 1: that this one person is built, and it's very much
Speaker 1: kind of like this, but there's only one of them,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like a um some
Speaker 1: sort of like cross between a Winnebago and like a
Speaker 1: hobbit hole. It's like this, you know, amazing idea for
Speaker 1: a custom built home. Um. Yeah, I just I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's feasible to mass produce them the way that
Speaker 1: he was imagining. You know, you gotta have demand be
Speaker 1: there or or it's got to be a situation where
Speaker 1: there's a real need for it. Because one of the
Speaker 1: applications that that has come up at times with some
Speaker 1: of these designs is why you could use it for
Speaker 1: emergency housing. You could you essentially a better take ons
Speaker 1: FEMA trailer on time of scenario. Yeah, that's true. And
Speaker 1: and um here's what I think of it. As you
Speaker 1: remember in the fifth element, the apartment that Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: lives in and that I don't remember, I remember it
Speaker 1: was vaguely blade runner any bed. Yeah, So it's basically
Speaker 1: like all the apartments are just like a bed and
Speaker 1: then like that folds out of a wall and everything
Speaker 1: else folds out of a wall. You're basically in like
Speaker 1: a room that's the size of like a walking closet.
Speaker 1: It's got one window and a door, and they're kind
Speaker 1: of like stacked on top of each other like um,
Speaker 1: like crates. Most Um. That's that's That's what I keep
Speaker 1: thinking of when I'm thinking of like the buck MMR.
Speaker 1: Fuller Dymaxian house. You know, like your shower head pops
Speaker 1: out of the wall in the corner, and then like
Speaker 1: the house is somehow designed so that all the water
Speaker 1: drains down immediately, you know, your your kitchen surfaces pop
Speaker 1: out of the sides of the wall. Whatever, whatever you
Speaker 1: need is available. But basically the space is very compact
Speaker 1: and small, and the the the actual structure itself is utilitarian,
Speaker 1: so the space transforms to meet your needs. And ye
Speaker 1: so if it needs to be a bathroom with toilet
Speaker 1: pops up, comes down, Yeah you just need to do yoga.
Speaker 1: Everything goes into the wall, right, yeah, yeah exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's visible either, but but
Speaker 1: like some of some of the architecture, I think that
Speaker 1: we're seeing people experiment with today, we might we might
Speaker 1: be heading towards something like that. Um. So okay, So
Speaker 1: he tried to mass produce these, even though they never
Speaker 1: really got off the ground. He worked together with this
Speaker 1: aircraft company in Wichita. So this was sorry, so not
Speaker 1: the late thirties, mid mid forties. Um, he did try
Speaker 1: to build two examples. They collapsed. Uh. The only surviving
Speaker 1: version of this actually is in the Henry Ford Museum
Speaker 1: in Dearborn, Michigan. So if you're out in Dearborn, you
Speaker 1: can go see one of these things see how it worked.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you, guys, if you've seen
Speaker 1: us before in action. I'm sure some listeners have seen
Speaker 1: one of these, or maybe they'll have seen some of
Speaker 1: the geodesic domes. We're gonna talk about it shortly. Um,
Speaker 1: he applied dymaxion too, almost everything. I'm surprised there wasn't
Speaker 1: a Dymaxian dome. But there was a bathroom. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: already talking about fifth element bathrooms, and he got in
Speaker 1: there as well. So the bathroom was just this single
Speaker 1: unit that had a built in shower, toilet, and sink, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It was just all you know, it's basically like a
Speaker 1: porta potty with like a sink and a shower built
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah, and you know, I'm I'm kind of
Speaker 1: sold on this because there's so much goes into the
Speaker 1: modern bathroom. Like there's like if you build a bathroom
Speaker 1: onto your house, um, like it just it gets really
Speaker 1: complicated really fast, and you have to worry about like
Speaker 1: how far is it or you're gonna have to have
Speaker 1: additional pumps and there's so many pipes going into it.
Speaker 1: But if you could just drop something in, if there
Speaker 1: was just this module like Lego, Yeah, it's just this
Speaker 1: Lego block your your your House project by a Zeppelin,
Speaker 1: then why not? Yeah? And the bath room is another
Speaker 1: is one of those key areas where we really don't
Speaker 1: do a lot of rethinking of the bathroom. So it's
Speaker 1: time for a full Bucky redo. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Oh that could we could do a whole episode on that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, the the audacity of the modern toilet is
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just ridiculous. So we should be rethinking
Speaker 1: the toilet more than we do, which makes me wonder
Speaker 1: to what extent he actually changed how we pooped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that there was a Dymaxian toilet out there
Speaker 1: somewhere that reimagined that whole scenario. I know you and
Speaker 1: Juliet covered something like that previously, right, Yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: a bit about about the science of pooping and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: since that episode, I've become a big advocate of the
Speaker 1: squat potty. So yeah, yeah, well, who knows. I'm sure
Speaker 1: if he were here today, Bucky would listen. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can imagine he would be a squatter if he were here.
Speaker 1: You're around now. But at the time, it just the
Speaker 1: concept might not have been out there enough for Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could have been a little too riskue. I mean,
Speaker 1: flying cities was pretty much as hard as far as
Speaker 1: he could push it and just run through. A couple
Speaker 1: of other Dimaxian ideas he had. It was the Dimxician
Speaker 1: development unit, which was essentially a mobile shelter also described
Speaker 1: as a grain bin with windows, and I believe this
Speaker 1: was something that like the military would use right deploy
Speaker 1: this in scenario essentially like a FEMA trailers situation um.
Speaker 1: And then he also had a Dimaxian map, which is
Speaker 1: projection of the world map onto the surface, and then
Speaker 1: so he drin a There was the twenty sided polygon,
Speaker 1: which can be unfolded and flattened to two dimensions, which
Speaker 1: also didn't catch up. So I'm trying to imagine this
Speaker 1: basically looks like a large twenty sided die for D
Speaker 1: and D eat. It unfolds into a map. Why why
Speaker 1: because because it's cool? Okay, But but that, just like
Speaker 1: the flat map didn't work for him. He needed flat
Speaker 1: He wanted to carry it around. The dime Axion man
Speaker 1: can't really roll with a traditional map. He needs a
Speaker 1: map that uh that that looks like it was given
Speaker 1: to us by you're already like thinking in the Madison
Speaker 1: Avenue like version of Dymaxian Man sales. I like that.
Speaker 1: I think it would be a great name for a
Speaker 1: store shop, a Dymaxion Man. I would not be surprised
Speaker 1: because when I was doing research for this, the A
Speaker 1: state of our Buckminster Fuller is kept up pretty well.
Speaker 1: The website is pretty interesting and has a lot of
Speaker 1: information of it on him of its own. Um. But
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if there is somebody who's holding
Speaker 1: the copyright to Dymaxion right now and just waiting for
Speaker 1: the opportunity. Oh yeah, because I mean again, a lot
Speaker 1: of these ideas were, according to the man himself, ahead
Speaker 1: of their time. And ahead of a head of ahead
Speaker 1: of even our time. So maybe it's just about waiting
Speaker 1: for them to come to fruition. Yeah, yeah, it could be. Well,
Speaker 1: here's one that sort of worked. This. He didn't use
Speaker 1: dymaxion for this. This is the geodesic home. So this
Speaker 1: is what most of us, uh probably recognize Bucky's contributions from.
Speaker 1: Uh So the Dymaxian stuff wasn't wasn't successful. Um So
Speaker 1: he said that didn't work. You know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna invent my own system of geometry. Uh and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it synergetic geometry. Uh. And he decided
Speaker 1: that ninety degree angles he's going to throw those out.
Speaker 1: It's all gonna be based on sixty degree angles. And
Speaker 1: apparently he hated the number pie, so he didn't He
Speaker 1: didn't like the idea of using that ungainly number to represent,
Speaker 1: you know, the tree with circles. So he even though
Speaker 1: it works, he said, nope, let's throw that away. We're
Speaker 1: gonna use the tetrahedron as this basic building block for
Speaker 1: the universe and everything's gonna stem out of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is interesting because it brings them behind a number
Speaker 1: of these different threads and mysticism that that apply a
Speaker 1: lot of mystic significance to the tetra he drawn, you know,
Speaker 1: like the he drawn his God. The tetrahedron is having uh,
Speaker 1: some sort of mathematical mystic significance. I wonder why that is.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, I'm sure. Again we're this episode. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's leading us into like a spider web of
Speaker 1: other future episodes. But there's got to be some connection
Speaker 1: there that makes it um cross cultural, right, like that
Speaker 1: it's something that that other um groups of humans have
Speaker 1: all come up on their own, separately. So he's into
Speaker 1: the tetrahedron. He decides that he's going to invent this
Speaker 1: thing that he calls the geodesic dome, and basically what
Speaker 1: it is is a series of struts, like metallic I believe,
Speaker 1: struts that support a skin kind of covering, not not
Speaker 1: actual skin. He's not Buffalo Bill here. It's it's you know,
Speaker 1: some kind of a material he's using. But basically this
Speaker 1: looks like a sphere cut in half, but it's composed
Speaker 1: of triangular support. So that's where this tetrahedron stuff comes in. UM.
Speaker 1: So at the time, you know, he actually managed to
Speaker 1: parlay the whole Dymaxian failure into a teaching position at
Speaker 1: Black Mountain College in North Carolina. And he was working
Speaker 1: with a team of students. Uh. And they built one
Speaker 1: of these as like you know, I think part of
Speaker 1: one of his classes or something like that, and uh,
Speaker 1: immediately it sagged and fell in on itself. So we
Speaker 1: were looking at the Dymaxian home all over again. Um.
Speaker 1: And he claimed the he intentionally wanted this to happen because,
Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of the faculty at the school like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this this wacko fuller. He just had the whole
Speaker 1: class build a crazy dome for semester and then collapsed.
Speaker 1: What's going on? Yeah, and he apparently they were referring
Speaker 1: to it on campus as a flapahedron. Uh and uh
Speaker 1: so he says, no, I intentionally did that because I
Speaker 1: wanted to know at what point the dome would collapse.
Speaker 1: You know, he had to figure out the weak structural
Speaker 1: points of this thing. He reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: the Cat in the Hat at this point, because the
Speaker 1: Cat in the Hat, who I've been reading a lot recently. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he's always causing a mess. But is that
Speaker 1: it that keeps reframing it as being a part of
Speaker 1: the plan. Yeah, I knew this would happen. I knew
Speaker 1: that the multiple cats would turn the yard into pink google.
Speaker 1: I knew that the Thing one and Thing too would
Speaker 1: run wild. But but there's a plan here, and everything's
Speaker 1: gonna work out in the end because I know what
Speaker 1: I'm and I know what I'm doing here. Yeah, Fuller
Speaker 1: doesn't strike me as a man that was capable of
Speaker 1: mitting when he was wrong very easily. Um. And and
Speaker 1: that leads us into there was there was some controversy
Speaker 1: around all of this, So he actually didn't invent these domes. Um.
Speaker 1: A guy named Walter bowers Field had already designed something
Speaker 1: like this for a planetarium in Germany, but Fuller got
Speaker 1: the paperwork done first, so he basically filed you know,
Speaker 1: the copyright registration whatever it was at the time that
Speaker 1: he was using for this. Uh. And so even though
Speaker 1: you know, the Goodesic domes basically used this method method
Speaker 1: that Bowersfeld had come with, Bucky held the u S
Speaker 1: patent and popularized the whole idea, and so we think
Speaker 1: of him as being the inventor for this thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Having worked on our show Stuff of Genius here at
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, which is largely about inventors and things
Speaker 1: they've invented. That is a common story with almost all
Speaker 1: inventions that yes, somebody else invented it, but this person
Speaker 1: got to the copyright office first. So there was another
Speaker 1: person as well that that Bucky Uh essentially took an
Speaker 1: idea from. Uh. This was one of his students who
Speaker 1: is at Black Mountain College. Um. So, so part of
Speaker 1: the idea of these geodesic domes was that they were
Speaker 1: held together by something that he called tense segrity. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know because what I from what I
Speaker 1: read he the way he used the term was that
Speaker 1: it was a combination of tension and integrity. Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I think he just like takes words and slams them together. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's a there's a fine art to
Speaker 1: creating a good poor too. But yeah, exactly. Um. But
Speaker 1: one of the students from that program, Kenneth Snelson, claimed
Speaker 1: that he was actually the one who came up with
Speaker 1: the whole idea for these sculptures, these geodesic dome sculptures. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that he worked on it while he was a
Speaker 1: student there, but he was under Fuller at the time,
Speaker 1: and that Fuller than was like, okay, well here's this.
Speaker 1: This is ten segrity, that's what we're gonna call it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you know, he just took off with the idea.
Speaker 1: So there is again some controversy about whether or not
Speaker 1: any of this. Now keep in mind, this is like
Speaker 1: one of the only things that he did that actually
Speaker 1: sort of worked, um, and and so there's controversy about
Speaker 1: whether or not he even came up with it in
Speaker 1: the first place himself, but he did work. And you
Speaker 1: do see these domes yeah, around the country. Yeah, in fact,
Speaker 1: you can, you know, you can very easily do a
Speaker 1: search and look up geodesic domes and see they're they're
Speaker 1: used all over the world. Actually, you know, um, the
Speaker 1: one that is the most famous, I believe it's the
Speaker 1: US Pavilion for the Expo sixties seven in Montreal. Um
Speaker 1: they built that, they built this geodesic dome structure, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: fairly noteworthy. But I believe that there's some in Japan.
Speaker 1: You said, you're even seeing some in your neighborhood. Growing up. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just down the middle of nowhere in Tennessee, there's a
Speaker 1: Judesic domehouse up on the hill. Well apparently, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of problems with these, uh
Speaker 1: and one of which was that they all leaked. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious if people that lived nearby you had problems
Speaker 1: with leaking, especially like in heavy rain seasons. You couldn't
Speaker 1: seal them successfully the way that they were designed. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people even said about um ones that they built
Speaker 1: under Fuller's guidance, that they would you know add um,
Speaker 1: what would you call it, like hulking or some kind
Speaker 1: of you know, material in order to cover up the
Speaker 1: spaces in between the triangles and and that would just
Speaker 1: make it even worse. All right. So part of the
Speaker 1: problem here is that you're creating you're creating a drastically
Speaker 1: new house, but and with that comes drastically new problems
Speaker 1: perhaps you know, I mean it is it's separate from
Speaker 1: the sort of evolution of the existing house design. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and think about it. You've got you know, what kind
Speaker 1: of a home would that be? Like you're basically just
Speaker 1: under one huge dome. Like there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: ways that you can subdivide that up. I mean you could,
Speaker 1: but um, from what a lot of people have said
Speaker 1: who have worked on these things, that the acoustics are
Speaker 1: as you would imagine, you know, pretty terrible. They just
Speaker 1: broadcast everything that one person says over to the other house.
Speaker 1: So there's not necessarily a whole lot of privacy there.
Speaker 1: One of those structures that it looks great I'm sure
Speaker 1: as a as a set for science fiction movie, but
Speaker 1: then you start asking questions, well like, well, how do
Speaker 1: we divide these rooms out? And then you have you're
Speaker 1: gonna have these weird rooms where everything just sort of
Speaker 1: caves off and into the corner. Um. Yeah, so again,
Speaker 1: wonderful concept. But then when you start applying it to
Speaker 1: the to real life and reality and our extations and
Speaker 1: demands of real life and reality, uh, some of the
Speaker 1: some of the potholes began to show. But you know,
Speaker 1: he was able to get people to invest money in this,
Speaker 1: including his wife. His wife sold thirty thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: stocks that she had to help fund his research so
Speaker 1: he could keep working on these things. And eventually he
Speaker 1: built a fifty foot diameter dome that worked, you know,
Speaker 1: other than the leaking. Today it is known as quote,
Speaker 1: the only large dome that can be set directly on
Speaker 1: the ground as a complete structure, and the only practical
Speaker 1: kind of building that has no limiting dimensions beyond which
Speaker 1: the structural strength must be insufficient. So that sounds architecturally fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it definitely, And it definitely lines up with
Speaker 1: his his outlook on life that technology can achieve all things.
Speaker 1: And here he has achieved essentially a perfect form. Right,
Speaker 1: it can it works at at any given size. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and and I think the thing out these that
Speaker 1: is we should point out that somewhat marvelous is how
Speaker 1: light they are for their size. Right. So he built
Speaker 1: one for the Ford More Motor Company in ninety three.
Speaker 1: It was to this is I assume why a lot
Speaker 1: of his stuff is in the Dearborn, Michigan Museum. There. Um,
Speaker 1: he used aluminum and fitted it with fiberglass, and it
Speaker 1: was ninety three ft dome and it only weighed eight
Speaker 1: point five tons. So you know, I'm not a structural engineer,
Speaker 1: but that sounds uh fairly light. Yeah. Um. And and
Speaker 1: then that so okay, So his wife puts in thirty
Speaker 1: grand Ford Motor Company hires him, and then the Pentagon
Speaker 1: hires him and they say, build us this protective housing
Speaker 1: unit for our radar, So another dome structure that you know, basically,
Speaker 1: I think they wanted to keep their radar, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't the equipment wasn't so obvious from basically instead of
Speaker 1: a traditional dome, des dome and then it will maybe
Speaker 1: be a little more structural integrity to it. Yeah, possibly, uh,
Speaker 1: And legend has it he even Nikita Khrushchev wanted Bucky
Speaker 1: to come to Moscow and build one of these for him. Um.
Speaker 1: And Bucky himself lived in one near Carbondale, Illinois, Illinois
Speaker 1: while he was working at Southern Illinois University. So uh,
Speaker 1: that's the one in particular that I know leaks really badly.
Speaker 1: The the that was the one that that Uh. I
Speaker 1: read interviews with people who worked on the construction of it,
Speaker 1: and they were just saying, yeah, like you know, he
Speaker 1: lived there, lived in quotations, but I think that it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily habitable. So that brings us to the natural
Speaker 1: extensive extension of the geodesic sphere, which is m I've
Speaker 1: got this idea for this sphere thing. It's kind of
Speaker 1: working out. Okay, I got car companies and the Pentagon
Speaker 1: giving me money to make more of these What if
Speaker 1: I could make these things fly? Yeah? I mean he's
Speaker 1: and he's already expressed an interest in ceiling up cities
Speaker 1: and domes and whatnot. And and so this is like
Speaker 1: the perfect extension, perfect tention of his design philosophy. Enclose
Speaker 1: us and close all of us and close a community
Speaker 1: in this structure that he has dreamed up, and then
Speaker 1: that structure will simply float up off the ground. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the idea here was that the temperature adjustments inside
Speaker 1: the sphere would uh like sort of act like a
Speaker 1: hot air balloon, like it would be warmer on the
Speaker 1: inside and subsequently it would float upwards. Um. But but
Speaker 1: that it would be large enough that it could float
Speaker 1: and have the same quote unquote tense segrety of his
Speaker 1: domes and also hows you know, an entire metropolis. Um.
Speaker 1: This is I'm gonna read this part here because it's
Speaker 1: this is his explanation of how it works technically, although
Speaker 1: keep in mind nobody has ever actually built by cloud nine. Um.
Speaker 1: So he sees it as a half mile diameter geodesic
Speaker 1: sphere that would only weigh one thousandth of the weight
Speaker 1: of the air inside of it, so that contributes to
Speaker 1: why it's able to float. If the internal air were
Speaker 1: heated by either solar energy or just you know, average
Speaker 1: human activity inside producing heat, it would take only one
Speaker 1: degree shift in fahrenheit over the external temperature of the
Speaker 1: dome or sphere rather to make it float. So the
Speaker 1: idea here is that the internal air would get denser
Speaker 1: when it cooled, and Bucky figured, you know, he'd put
Speaker 1: polyethylene curtains around the outside to slow the rate that
Speaker 1: the air from outside was entering the sphere. So this
Speaker 1: is his you know, he did actually think out some
Speaker 1: of the math and science around this um. Essentially, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a space age hot air ballint except much
Speaker 1: larger and uh and would you know would would allow
Speaker 1: us in theory to elevate small communities and not whole
Speaker 1: metropolis is I don't don't think you ever actually argued that,
Speaker 1: but but small towns, many cities, etcetera. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: he took this idea basically because there was a game
Speaker 1: name Matt Suturo Shariki in Japan who challenged him and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know you've got all these big ideas, here's what
Speaker 1: I would like to see, um uh, you know, come
Speaker 1: up with something that can float over Tokyo bay um.
Speaker 1: And so that's where Bucky basically, you know, really put
Speaker 1: his effort into this. I believe Shariki paid him to
Speaker 1: sort of think this up. But so they had two names.
Speaker 1: We were calling them cloud Nines. That was sort of
Speaker 1: their nickname, but the the official name was the Spherical
Speaker 1: Tin Secrity Atmosphere Research Station or STARS for short. Uh.
Speaker 1: And his idea was basically, like you know, like with
Speaker 1: all of his other sort of portable homes or or
Speaker 1: gadgets and inventions, you take these things around, set them up.
Speaker 1: You know. One idea was that you could anchor him
Speaker 1: to a mountain, so you've just got this flying home
Speaker 1: next to a mountain, or you just let him go,
Speaker 1: like let him go like a balloon that flies out
Speaker 1: of a child's hand, and just the inhabitants would see
Speaker 1: the world like wherever the dome took them. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful optimistic vision. Yeah, technology has I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: ultimate non drudgery home. Right, You're literally floating free of
Speaker 1: the world. You're no longer limited by the confines of
Speaker 1: of your environment. You don't have to worry about floods
Speaker 1: or storms. Well, you probably have to worry about storms,
Speaker 1: but but you know, you can do a little advanced notice.
Speaker 1: You can just float to a storm free area, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that's the idea all over
Speaker 1: the nearest Zeppelin Zeppelin coming by to dropped some bombs,
Speaker 1: to build some homes. They just zip by, tug you along.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how he envisioned controlling
Speaker 1: the direction these things went. And I didn't read anything
Speaker 1: about like propulsion or anything like that. But maybe it
Speaker 1: was just all that fascination of Zeppelin's at the time. Um,
Speaker 1: he would have been like a steampunk cost player. Now
Speaker 1: it is, Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm kind of surprised
Speaker 1: that I don't see this idea replicated in uh in
Speaker 1: science fiction. I mean, I assume it is. Is it
Speaker 1: has been used somewhere because because Buckminster was just too influential,
Speaker 1: not but you think it would be showing up in
Speaker 1: video games left and right. I worked on something once
Speaker 1: that wasn't published where there was a Cloud nine in
Speaker 1: the story. And this was before I had started working here.
Speaker 1: And done some really deep research on Fuller and I believe,
Speaker 1: I want to say it was something by Warren Ellis
Speaker 1: that I had read where he had envisioned using cloud
Speaker 1: nines for something. Yeah, it sort of inspired me. And
Speaker 1: you certainly see this concept employed elsewhere with other other
Speaker 1: other individuals were thinking about the possible you know, applications
Speaker 1: for this kind of technology. Uh, in particular nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one edition of Technica Mola Desi, which was a essentially
Speaker 1: Soviet era popular science magazine, and uh, you see this
Speaker 1: concept for colonies in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Because
Speaker 1: of course, the planet Venus at surface level is just
Speaker 1: a poisonous pressure cooker, you know, that's it's not hospitable
Speaker 1: in the least for human life. But conceivably, if you
Speaker 1: were to have some sort of a floating structure, you
Speaker 1: could you could you could just place it in the
Speaker 1: upper atmosphere and there we would be able to live
Speaker 1: and you know, artificially not out in the open, but
Speaker 1: but with a with a little more earthlike conditions. And
Speaker 1: so cloud City and Empire strikes back. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I was never sure exactly how Cloud City was supposed
Speaker 1: to float in that science magic propelling it. But this
Speaker 1: particular concept in the in the Soviet publication would have
Speaker 1: used a very similar design using uh, you know you
Speaker 1: depending on the buoyant sea of the atmosphere enclosed in
Speaker 1: a giant sphere. Okay, okay, yeah, the drawing for that
Speaker 1: is fascinating. And you posted that onto the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Boil your in mind site already, right, yes, and I'll
Speaker 1: be sure to include a link to that post on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode. Okay, great, Yeah, everybody
Speaker 1: go take a look at that, because I think it
Speaker 1: gives you a pretty good idea of how humans would
Speaker 1: turn a flipping sphere like this into a little microcosm,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and he's kind of around me like
Speaker 1: a submarine. Yeah, And he's very much in keeping with
Speaker 1: the fuller design philosophy of like, here's something we could do,
Speaker 1: potentially can do, but there are a lot of steps
Speaker 1: that would need to get check off the list before
Speaker 1: we actually got to floating cities. Well, and that that
Speaker 1: was basically his you know, and thesis on the whole
Speaker 1: thing was he even said like, all right, this is
Speaker 1: not an idea that I know how to actually bring about.
Speaker 1: He called it a exercise to stimulate imaginative thinking. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know, he thought it would eventually be
Speaker 1: possible to do this, but he didn't see how they
Speaker 1: could be constructed until his far future. I don't know
Speaker 1: how far in the future he meant. Maybe it's today,
Speaker 1: maybe it's two hundred years from now, I don't know. Um. So,
Speaker 1: you know that's basically that's a that's a good round,
Speaker 1: uh summary of a fuller There's you know, more to
Speaker 1: him than the wacky invention that we didn't really get
Speaker 1: into today. He is noted as being what we refer
Speaker 1: to today as somebody who would be like a green
Speaker 1: philosopher like, uh, take note, like the solar energy aspect
Speaker 1: of the of the cloud nines, that's how they would
Speaker 1: be heated, not with gas or or other fossil fuels. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he's also you know, seen as being a social
Speaker 1: theorist too, so some people see him as really thinking
Speaker 1: ahead of time about human again like what I was
Speaker 1: saying earlier, like I think he would be like a
Speaker 1: great urban studies professor today. Yeah. Yeah. He seemed to
Speaker 1: think a lot about you know, where technology meets humanity
Speaker 1: and not just you know, not just about what's come
Speaker 1: before and but but also but what we can do
Speaker 1: with it and and and and what needs need to
Speaker 1: be met by a technology? Yeah. Yeah, Well, so okay,
Speaker 1: I went into this, uh, you know, wanting to to
Speaker 1: to love him. I think I learned a little bit
Speaker 1: more about his background and it it made me less
Speaker 1: convinced of him as an inventor necessarily. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: even though only a few of his ideas have come
Speaker 1: to fruition, you know, he has influenced counterculture to quite
Speaker 1: a degree, social thinking as well. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of Silicon Valleys pioneers list him as being
Speaker 1: one of the biggest inspirations. Yeah, and ultimately that's that's
Speaker 1: his contribution, is that he was a dreamer and he
Speaker 1: and he was an optimist when it came to technology
Speaker 1: and uh and design and uh and so yeah, that's
Speaker 1: his greatest gifts. He passes this design philosophy onto individuals
Speaker 1: who can either take those dreams a little further or
Speaker 1: figure out how to realistically apply them in a beneficial way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the practical applications. Maybe that's something that comes after his life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta have somebody throw out the dream and then
Speaker 1: somebody else needs to make it, figure out how to
Speaker 1: make Maybe he's not as much of a con artist
Speaker 1: as I made him out to be at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the episode. Man, yeah, I I don't think of
Speaker 1: him as as a con artist as much as a
Speaker 1: dreamer who like like his post Cloud nine is is
Speaker 1: floating a little bit off of here. Well, they like
Speaker 1: his vision that he experienced to floating and that his
Speaker 1: life is not. Oh yeah, look at that, those all
Speaker 1: connect floating. He's literally in this sense of an architect
Speaker 1: and engineer who doesn't have both feet on the ground.
Speaker 1: But that's all love him because he's he's thinking free
Speaker 1: of those restraints. Absolutely. So there you have it. That
Speaker 1: is our buckminster Fuller indeed, to dive into who he
Speaker 1: was when we're still talking about him today and what
Speaker 1: some of his more out there ideas and encouraging ideas
Speaker 1: that consisted of. So if you are out there and
Speaker 1: you have seen some of these inventions in real life,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear about it or even maybe you know,
Speaker 1: see photos or something like that. If you could send
Speaker 1: him to us on social media. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler, where we are Blow to
Speaker 1: Mind on all of those platforms, and of course the
Speaker 1: mothership floating high above the surface our cloud nine is
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, so check that
Speaker 1: out for all the podcast episode, it's all the videos,
Speaker 1: all the blog posts, links out to those social media accounts,
Speaker 1: you name it, and you can always contact us at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.