At Penang Hill, you'll be able to see at least one similar structure. The Bellevue Hotel features a small, permanent dome in its aviary but if you want to gawk at it, it'll cost you RM5 to go in. It's worth your while to go and enjoy yourself.
The other dome at Penang Hill is at the back of the same hotel, in a clearing which provides you with a breath-taking view stretching from Tanjung Tokong and sweeping past George Town to the Penang Bridge and beyond to the mainland. This dome was built recently to accommodate the Local, Global and Universe environmental awareness and education programme on 13-15 July 2007. It's to be seen whether the structure will be removed now that the programme is over. I hope not.
All the geodesic domes in Penang were built as tributes to the late Richard Buckminster Fuller (nicknamed Bucky). Until his death in 1983, Bucky was the Specialist Consultant to the KOMTAR project, of which he was the key source of inspiration in its design and implementation.
Bucky will forever be associated with the geodesic dome. It's possibly his most famous invention. The concept was rather simple: that while a sphere encloses the most space with the least surface area, a tetrahedron encloses the least space with the most surface area and provides the greatest strength for the least volume (or weight). Calling it "invisible mathematics at work", he designed a spherical structure made up of tetrahedral shapes that actually became proportionately stronger and lighter as the dome's size increased. Thus was born the Geodesic Dome.Since 1947, geodesic domes have been built for radar stations in the Arctic and Antarctica, factories, army shelters, dwellings, concert and exhibition halls, restaurants, auditoriums, banks, sports complexes, car assembly plant and recreational/educational complexes.
And this is me with Dato Seri Lim Chong Keat (the architect brother of Penang's former Chief Minister Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu). He organised the programme at his hotel as a tribute to his close friend, Buckminster Fuller.
Sorry, but the geodesic dome was not invented by Fuller. It was invented by Carl Bauersfeld, chief engineer at Zeiss.
ReplyDeleteThe first geodesic dome was built in 1919, when Buckminster Fuller was in his youth.
You can see it here:
http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~trothman/domes.html
He simply stole the idea and marketed it. This happens all the time. Great inventions by a European are stolen by some Anglosaxon who claims to have invented it. This is true for so many things, from the internet and geodesic domes, to the God particle, etc...
Agh, we're over it. It doesn't matter. We invent it, Anglosaxons claim it. No problem.
Who's 'we'?
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteI was drawn by the debate over Fullers plagiary. Im not really interested in who "we" are or Anglo-Saxon vs other rivalry. I am more interested in the fact that Fullers reputation is based overwhelmingly on credit for a concept which he stole in the most brutal and direct way imaginable: Fuller worked in a govt dept with access to intelligence intercepts of foreign mail. He abused this position to obtain patent applications from the actual inventor. Then he patented the idea under his own name. He then acquired a gigantic reputation as some kind of genius. Sure, he did ither things before the dome patent...but it was rubbish ( eg, the ridiculous Dymaxion car ).
Fuller is an example of how ill-founded reputations snowball, getting bigger and bigger because they had a kick-start which, in his case, was theft.
Curiously, Fuller actually wrote a book in which he stated that plagiarism is "another word for talent". Seems like he had an unconscious awareness of his own hollowness to try to rationalise away.