Walther Bauersfeld

Walther Bauersfeld (1879 to 1959) was a German engineer at the Carl Zeiss works in Jena who is recognized as the inventor of the geodesic dome. After the astronomer Max Wolf suggested a projection planetarium, Zeiss began the work in 1912, paused it during the First World War and resumed it afterward. Bauersfeld completed the first projector, the Zeiss I, in 1923 and it was first set up on the roof of the company headquarters in Jena, projecting 4,900 stars as seen from Jena's latitude only. He then developed the Model 2 with 8,956 stars and the ability to show the sky from any latitude, and over a dozen were installed in cities including Berlin, Dusseldorf, Rome, Paris, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York before the Second World War. The Jena planetarium dome is also regarded as the first geodesic dome derived from the icosahedron, built about 26 years before Buckminster Fuller popularized the design. After the war he stayed with the Zeiss firm in East Germany and from 1953 developed the small ZKP-1 projector. He received the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1933 and the Werner von Siemens Ring in 1941, and the asteroid 1553 Bauersfelda is named for him.