Stephen C. Baer / Zomeworks Corporation — Filed May 4, 1970
Google Patents (CA): https://patents.google.com/patent/CA949279A
Google Patents (US): https://patents.google.com/patent/US3722153A
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| US patent | US3722153A — issued March 27, 1973 |
| CA equivalent | CA949279A — filed May 3, 1971; published June 18, 1974; Expired |
| GB equivalent | GB1354521A — filed May 4, 1971; published June 5, 1974; Expired |
| Title | Structural system |
| Inventor | Stephen C. Baer, Corrales, NM |
| Assignee | Zomeworks Corporation, Albuquerque, NM |
| Priority date | May 4, 1970 |
| US filed | May 4, 1970 (Appl. No. 34,163) |
| US issued | March 27, 1973 |
| US classification | 52/81, 52/648, 52/DIG.10 (static structures, polyhedron) |
| International class | E04B1/32 — Arched/vaulted/folded structures with faceted surface |
A structural system in which the structural members are interconnected so that they are parallel to the lines of the star of the faces of an icosahedron. The system includes structural members parallel to the lines of the star of the vertices of an icosahedron and also includes structural members parallel to the lines of the star of the midpoints of the edges of an icosahedron.
10 Claims, 15 Drawing Figures.
This is the 31-zone structural system described in the Zome Primer (Zomeworks Corporation, August 1970). The Primer referred to it as "Patent applied for... assigned to Zomeworks Corporation." The filing date (May 4, 1970) is three months before the Primer's publication — the patent was in process as the book went to print.
The 31 lines of the icosahedron star are:
Structural members parallel to these 31 directions can be assembled into zonohedra — convex polyhedra whose faces are all parallelograms in parallel pairs (zones). Any zone can be stretched, shrunk, or removed without altering the geometry of other zones. Multiple zomes cluster through shared skew hexagon faces.
This structural patent preceded all the thermal patents by 25 years. Its commercial analog was Zometool — the 31-zone ball-and-stick modeling system that Jose Baer described as "possibly his father's most significant work," adopted by scientists for quasicrystal and symmetry demonstrations. The structural logic of the zome — faceted parallelogram faces, clustering through shared zones — is also what allowed the Baer House to have the south-facing geometry that made the DrumWall possible.
Sources: Google Patents CA949279A (Canadian filing) and US3722153A (US patent). Fetched from web.
URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/CA949279A