Epcot IllumiNations- Reflections of Earth 1

The Geoscope was a proposal by

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing ...

around 1960 to create a

globe A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model glo ...

that would be covered in colored lights so that it could function as a large spherical display. It was envisioned that the Geoscope would be connected to computers which would allow it to display both historical and current data, and enable people to visualize large scale patterns around the world. Several projects by his students to build a "miniature Earth", starting with a 20-foot version at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 1952, were precursors of the Geoscope proposal. Before proposing the Geoscope, Fuller had invented the

Dymaxion map The Dymaxion map or Fuller map is a projection of a world map onto the surface of an icosahedron, which can be unfolded and flattened to two dimensions. The flat map is heavily interrupted in order to preserve shapes and sizes. The projection ...

, a novel

map projection In cartography, map projection is the term used to describe a broad set of transformations employed to represent the two-dimensional curved surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and l ...

for the whole Earth. Many of Fuller's ideas for the functions of the Geoscope are now being realized by virtual globes. Fuller did not limit his use of the term "Geoscope" to the diameter globe proposed for installation near the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

in New York. He also used it to refer to smaller globes to be viewed from the inside outwards toward the stars. In Fuller's book ''Critical Path'' he advocated for constructing many Geoscopes as large see-through spheres shaped and oriented like the planet Earth. By standing inside, one could view the stars exactly as they appear to anyone standing at any point on Earth. Computers for each Geoscope will "store all relevant inventories of world data arranged chronologically, in the order and spacing of discovery, as they have occurred throughout all known history". Time-lapse images projected onto the Geoscope would display in a matter of minutes all sorts of global, long-term trends, everything from continental drift to human migration to use of transportation. With the Geoscope humanity would be able to recognize formerly invisible patterns and thereby to forecast and plan in vastly greater magnitude than heretofore.

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Fuller Dome
– Geoscope-like

geodesic dome A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic do ...

at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Buckminster Fuller Virtual globes {{Struct-stub __NOTOC__

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