U.S. Marine Corps

The U.S. Marine Corps, which after Fuller's 1954 patent became the geodesic dome's first large-scale institutional adopter.

After the geodesic dome was patented in 1954, the Marine Corps began using the domes for air-lifted housing, and the corpus describes the Corps as an early and enthusiastic adopter. It commissioned thousands of small geodesic domes, delivered to the military around the world by helicopter — the first deployment at a scale that tested Fuller's claims about weight, portability, and rapid erection.

Larger domes from the same lineage went into service as weather stations and long-range radar stations. The Corps' domes were engineered on the government-contract side of Fuller's practice, through Geodesics, Inc.

Role in Fuller's world

The Marine Corps is the institution that validated the geodesic dome by using it hard. It is also the sharpest form of Fuller's central compromise: he argued that military funding was the only available channel for advancing structural technology that would eventually become livingry, and the Corps is what that argument bought.

See Also

• Geodesics, Inc. — the Fuller company that handled government and military contracts
• Geodesic Dome — the form the Corps adopted
• Fuller and the Military — the full record of Fuller's defense relationships

Sources

• Geodesic dome history — the Marine Corps as early and enthusiastic adopter
• Buckminster Fuller — New World Encyclopedia — air-lifted housing following the 1954 patent
• R. Buckminster Fuller — paintings, bio, ideas — thousands of helicopter-delivered domes; weather and radar stations
• Livingry — Fuller's justification for accepting military funding