So, there he went to Isle de la Madeleine in the summer time of 1973, working with his friend, in order to upgrade the primitive chicken farm, the one and only there to supply egges to people living on that small island.
They worked hard through the winter till the summer time of 1974, installing all the things that they had planned to do.
Beside anything else, Richard came up with an idea for a simple greenhouse, and they built it on the south side of the poultry barn. The following image shows what they built:
The idea was very simple. In fact Richard had thought about ways to replicate what he saw in his vision ever since he got the vision at the age of 14. He just never got the chance to test these ideas until now. The problem in reality somehow helped him to act upon it.
The reality there forced him to think this way: the poultry barn was simply too hot for the hens laying eggs inside – so he had to come with a solution to cool down the barn and at the same time to utilize the heat.
So he came up with the above plan and the two of them started to work on it.
They first installed an exhaust fan to blow the hot air out first, which was the easiest and also the most urgent thing to do.
Then Richard called around and found a company who was willing to make duct like square tubes using polyfilm. They connected quite a few of these soft ducts together to form the sourth side glazing surface. The hot air that was blown out helped it to conform this double-layer glazing into a half-round shape naturally. Brilliant!
Massive amound of water was contained and positioned at the base (marked blue in the above sketch) where a pump was placed within. Water was pumped to the top and sprayed out in a form of mist (white color in a sense) to cool off the entire cavity.
The east and west sides are sealed off to complete the build. Pretty simple. They then grew some plants inside to test how they grew in this newly created environment.
Everything went well as Richard had planned. And he came to check its performance everyday and shut off the fan and water pump at night when the air was cool.
A small accident triggered everything
But one day, he forgot to turn off the fan and the pump. So when he came the second day morning, only to find that the whole system was running all the time through the entire night. What a waste of energy!
Well, that happens in life to everyone once in a while, right?
But when he went to check on the nozzles, something extraordinary caught his great attention: instead of seeing water mist (off white), he saw white foam clustered around the nozzles.
Boom!
The vision he saw when he was 14 flashed back: it is both the water vapor and the bubbles!!!
Bubbles are transparent when they are large, but when they are tiny and stick together they look as white as snow.
When you fill the cavity with bubbles and nothing but the bubbles, they transform their dual and dynamic nature to the cavity: transparent when there are no bubbles, white when it is filled with bubbles everywhere inside.
This was it! He got it!
What he saw in the vision was real. He had found in reality the very thing that he could use to replicate what he saw in the vision.
Look at these tiny bubbles. They are white indeed. And they are light and can float around. They can be created as long you need them. When you don’t need them, they disappear naturally by themselves.
Can you find anything like these bubbles, being formed from water and air, and going back to water after they burst naturally.
Yes, you can create bubbles simply by blowing into water with a straw, but these bubbles disappear as fast as they are created.
But if you add soap into water, you can create bubbles easily. Kids love them when you bathe them in water tubs with soap foam floating around. Not just kids. Think about it, who else don’t love bubbles?
Check the following video to explore that fun with bubbles:
The next was automatic. Richard moved to Prince Edward Island. He found a job there so that he had the time and money to study bubbles. Yes, nothing else but bubbles in his spare time.
Six years passed quickly this way. By 1979, having fully understood the whole thing inside and out, Richard was ready to apply for a patent for his discovery.
