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The word ‘dymaxion’ was invented at a time when Chicago was very much caught up in the dilemma of its commercial and artistic rivalry with New York. It was made up by the public relations and advertising people at Marshall Field & Co. Once in a while Marshall Field did some cultural projects: Putting an old Chinese Urn on display, or whatever it might be. Anyway they had arranged to display a model of my first house on a mast and they asked me what the name of it was. I said it doesn’t have a name.
Marshall Field had some very talented ‘wordsmiths’ as consultants-- they were the men who invented the word ‘radio’. We had lunch and they asked me the philosophy of the house. After the lunch they compiled the main things they remembered. They took no notes while I was talking; it was mainly an exercise in what they could recall. They tried to remember the most prominent sentence; and then what were the most prominent words; and then what were the most prominent syllables. They kept at this for a week or so. What they were seeking was the most harmonic and graphic ways of bringing the pertinent syllables together. They explained that syllables were the pepper and salt of my speech.
