Geodesic dome Zeiss plant in Jena, Germany. A larger dome, called "The Wonder of Jena", opened to the public in July 1926. Some 20 years later, R. Buckminster Fuller named the dome "geodesic" from field experiments with artist Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain College in 1948 and 1949. Although Fuller was not the original inventor, he is credited with the U.S. popularization of the idea for which he received U.S. patent 2,682,235 29 June 1954. The geodesic dome appealed to Fuller because it was extremely strong for its weight, its "omnitriangulated" surface provided an inherently stable structure, and because a sphere encloses
Solving the geodesic equations curve γ("s") in formula_1 and formula_5 are the Christoffel symbols. The Christoffel symbols are functions of the metric and are given by: where the comma indicates a partial derivative with respect to the coordinates: As the manifold has dimension formula_8, the geodesic equations are a system of formula_8 ordinary differential equations for the formula_8 coordinate variables. Thus, allied with initial conditions, the system can, according to the Picard–Lindelöf theorem, be solved. One can also use a Lagrangian approach to the problem: defining and applying the Euler–Lagrange equation. As the laws of physics can be written in any coordinate system, it