debunk
Bob Burkhardt
1946 printing), I find he cites William E. Woodward's 1923 book "Bunk"
as the source for the word "debunk" which Bucky claimed to have invented
in 1927. A biographical sketch at SIU
http://archives.lib.siu.edu/controlcard.php?id=8 notes Woodward as well.
(The SIU sketch oddly leaves out "tensegrity" when it lists Bucky's
neologisms, but retains the misconceived "ephemeralization".) Woodward
is news to me, but certainly no great disappointment as the invention of
debunk seemed to me a curiosity rather than a claim to fame.
In discussions with Snelson, I puckishly accused him of stealing the
word "tensegrity" by insisting on narrowing the definition down to cover
only Snelson's floating-compression sculptures. Perhaps turnabout is
fair play, but it still doesn't look that good, in this case the
turnabout being recompense for Bucky's attempted theft of Snelson's
floating-compression innovation. But Snelson's "theft" compares to
Bucky's like a molehill to a mountain, just as Bucky's "theft" compares
to Watergate the same way. (I made the latter comparison in a recent
message to the Geodesic list.) I noted to Snelson that by broadening
the scope of my definition of tensegrity, I brought Snelson's term,
"floating compression," back into my vocabulary as a useful way of
referring to a particular class of tensegrity.
And while Snelson has a rather dark view of Bucky's broadening of the
scope of what he wanted to refer to with tensegrity, and certainly there
may be some legitimacy to this view, for myself I also recall how in
mathematics and economics concepts which are originally fairly narrowly
conceived are found to have broader application as they are grasped and
applied. A good take on Snelson's story of the theft is at
http://www.grunch.net/snelson/rmoto.html (it gets the date of the
Architectural Forum article wrong and the month should be August 1951
rather than January). I'm not sure if there is a public source for his
allegations about the development of the word "tensegrity," his dark
view being that Fuller threw many of his innovations into the pot to
obscure Snelson's contribution. Certainly when I see geodesic domes get
thrown into the pot I have to have some sympathy with Snelson's point of
view. On the other hand, I think Fuller has very good claim to consider
some of his earlier developments, like the frame of the dymaxion house,
as "tensegrity," at least they look that way from my point of view. I
see Bucky as making substantial contributions to the development of
tensegrity before and after Snelson's innovation.
Snelson also got me to looking again at Gough's claim that Ioganson put
together a tensegrity prism back in 1921. This rests on an old
exhibition photo which is fairly poor; but looking at it again, I see
the sculpture in question does seem to have the characteristic 30-degree
twist a prism would exhibit even though the tendons can't be made out in
the photo and one of the struts is almost invisible. So I would give
the claim credence, though I would agree with Snelson that this credence
can only be lent by someone who is already familiar with the modern-day
construction. But I also think that Snelson's X-Piece is a step beyond
Ioganson's. A thoughtful look at a prism would make one marvel at how
three struts can be rigidly oriented in space independent of gravity
without being attached to one another. So a prism does catch the
imagination somewhat, but not so much as the X-Piece where a compression
component visually floats. So it took Snelson's work to really get
tensegrity airborne.
Bob
--
Bob Burkhardt
http://www.freewebtown.com/bobwb/ts/synergetics/photos/