Dymaxion is a term coined by architect and inventor

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 more t ...

and associated with much of his work, prominently his

Dymaxion house The Dymaxion house was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times—all of them fa ...

and

Dymaxion car The Dymaxion car was designed by American inventor Buckminster Fuller during the Great Depression and featured prominently at Chicago's 1933/1934 World's Fair. Fuller built three experimental prototypes with naval architect Starling Burgess ...

. A

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of the words ''dynamic'', ''maximum'', and ''tension'', Dymaxion sums up the goal of his study, "maximum gain of advantage from minimal energy input".

Description

A name was needed for the display of Fuller's first architectural model, later to be known as the

, at the

Marshall Field's Marshall Field & Company (colloquially Marshall Field's) was an American department store chain founded in 1852 by Potter Palmer. It was based in Chicago, Illinois and founded in the 19th century, it grew to become a large chain before Macy's, ...

department store in Chicago. To create the name, wordsmith Waldo Warren was hired by Marshall Field's and spent two days listening to Fuller, getting a feel for his idiosyncratic use of language—later playing with the syllables typical of Fuller's speech until he and Fuller agreed on the word ''Dymaxion''. Fuller used the word for many of his inventions during the decades to follow, including the Dymaxion house, the

Dymaxion deployment unit A Dymaxion deployment unit (DDU) or Dymaxion House, is a structure designed in 1940 by Buckminster Fuller consisting of a 20-foot circular hut constructed of Corrugated galvanised iron, corrugated steel looking much like a yurt or the top of a met ...

, the

, and the Dymaxion world map. Dymaxion also came to describe a

polyphasic sleep Polyphasic sleep is any sleep of multiple periods in the course of 24 hours. Polyphasic usually means more than two periods of sleep, whereas biphasic (or diphasic, bifurcated, or bimodal) sleep, means solely two periods of sleep. Its opposite is ...

schedule he followed, consisting of four 30-minute naps throughout the day. Fuller eventually renamed his elaborate journal—a highly specific, highly detailed self-documentation of his life—as the ''

Dymaxion Chronofile The Dymaxion Chronofile is Buckminster Fuller's attempt to document his life as completely as possible. He created a very large scrapbook in which he documented his life from 1917 to 1983. Fuller describes his Chronofile as " ontributionto the sci ...

''.

References

Buckminster Fuller {{architecture-stub