The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet include drawings, charts, and lists accompanying the written elements. These drawings are purported to be done by T.S. himself, who also provides each with an explanatory caption that deepens the book's narrative. This is designed to mimic T.S.'s own habit of quantifying the world around him using cartography. Larsen has stated that this technique was not originally intended to be included in the book's format, finishing a complete first draft of the work before he "discovered the margins as a playground of T.S.’s mind." Larsen's parents were both visual artists (his mother a painter and photographer, his father a printmaker),
Geodesic dome the greatest volume for the least surface area. The dome was successfully adopted for specialized uses, such as the 21 Distant Early Warning Line domes built in Canada in 1956, the 1958 Union Tank Car Company dome near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, designed by Thomas C. Howard of Synergetics, Inc. and specialty buildings such as the Kaiser Aluminum domes (constructed in numerous locations across the US, e.g., Virginia Beach, Virginia), auditoriums, weather observatories, and storage facilities. The dome was soon breaking records for covered surface, enclosed volume, and construction speed. Beginning in 1954, the U.S. Marines experimented with helicopter-deliverable geodesic domes.