The first spatial structure was developed by the inventor of telephone, Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) in 1907. He worked with tetrahedral and octahedral units to create various shapes. Graham Bell’s grid structures consisted of multi-layered assemblages of bars with the same length and joined by simple connections. The base units were tetrahedral shapes.
"Bell's architectural experiments with tetrahedral structures was an observation tower at Beinn Bhreagh, his summer estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia. Each unit for this tower consisted of six 4-foot pieces of ordinary galvanized iron pipe and four connecting nuts; the units, themselves, were riveted together in the field by unskilled labor. Upon its completion in September 1907, the tower stood nearly 80 feet high."
'We are all too much inclined, I think, to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all round us and right at our very feet that we have never seen, because we have never really looked.' - A.Graham Bell
source : http://www.setareh.arch.vt.edu/safas/003_history_01.html
http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/bell.html
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