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
Geodesic dome Norway and in 2013 a glass and wood clad dome home was built in Austria. In Chile, examples of geodesic domes are being readily adopted for hotel accommodations either as tented style geodesic domes or glass-covered domes. Examples: EcoCamp Patagonia, Chile; and Elqui Domos, Chile. Although dome homes enjoyed a wave of popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as a housing system, the dome has many disadvantages and problems. A former proponent of dome homes, Lloyd Kahn, who wrote two books about them ("Domebook 1" and "Domebook 2") and founded Shelter Publications, became disillusioned with them, calling them