Paul Hildebrandt

Paul Hildebrandt is the founder and CEO of Zometool Inc., an educational geometry toy company that commercialized Steve Baer’s 31-zone zonohedra system. Per his solarfool.org bio, he “has devoted the last 45 years to developing applications of Steve Baer’s 31-zone system,” and he is one of the four team members listed on the site of Solar Fools.

Zometool

Zometool is a physical ball-and-strut construction kit built directly on Baer’s 31-zone star. The ball has a hole for each of the 31 directions in Baer’s system; the struts come in three types corresponding to the A, B, and C line families. The result is a manipulable model of the same geometric space covered by Baer’s US Patent 3,722,153.

Hildebrandt describes it as “a physical embodiment of quantum math.” The kit has been adopted by scientists for quasicrystal and symmetry demonstrations. In the Amherst College memorial for his father, Jose Baer called the 31-zone truss — developed into the Zometool — “possibly his father’s most significant work.”

Zometool is distinct from Zomeworks — both names derive from Baer’s “zome,” but Zometool is a commercial education product company while Zomeworks was a passive solar engineering company.

Solar Fools and CoolSky

Hildebrandt is a key member of Solar Fools, the open-source community continuing Baer’s passive heating and cooling work. His stated goal is to build houses using Baer’s passive heating/cooling technology — closing the loop between the geometric lineage (Zometool) and the thermal lineage (Cool Cell, NSRC) that run in parallel through the Baer archive.

See also

• Zome
• Solar Fools
• Zomeworks Corporation
• Steve Baer
• Jose Baer