Ring Pole™ tents have taken thousands of years to evolve. Nomadic dwellings were developed over time in harmony with available materials and the environment. Nomads asked, "how can we make viable shelters with what we have" and, accordingly, desert Arabs made shady Black Tents of tensioned black goat hair with scant wooden supports, Mongolians made easy to heat Yurts using wood, cloth, hide and felt to handle long windy winters, and Native Americans made Tipis using Buffalo hides wrapped around long stout poles. They developed idealized structures whose basic form changed little over the course of thousands of years. The Yurt and Tipi had fairly rigid wooden underlying structures over which they draped coverings; the Arab Black Tents used tensioned fabric as their structure.
In recent times canvas, fiberglass, and aluminum became available and a handful of new classic structures emerged to take advantage of these modern materials; the A-frame, the wall tent, the pyramid tent, the ubiquitous dome tent, and the tunnel tent. Designers have been tweaking these basic tent types ever since. Most of these tent types are in the tradition of Yurts and Tipis, draping and stretching materials over or under a fairly rigid structure whereas the tunnel tent uses tensioned fabric in the tradition of the Black Tent.
Now, in continuation of this evolution, a new tent type has evolved that takes advantage of strong modern fabrics and embraces both the Black Tent's use of tensioned fabric and the round shapes of the Yurt and Tipi. This type is the Ring Pole™ tent. Ring Pole™ tents are
tensegrity
tents that integrate fabric and semi-rigid components synergistically, balancing tension and compression components. Richard Webster and John Mann have been awarded U.S. utility patent US 6,877,521 B2 for the tent structure and the radical Nesting Ring™ support system behind Ring Pole™ tents.
Modern fabrics are now strong enough to be structural and a metal component under compression, strengthened by the fabric that surrounds it, doesn’t need to be beefy. We strive for fabric tautness, simplicity of design, spacious headroom over the entire footprint, minimal weight, small packed size, and ease of set up.
Ring Pole™ tents were born in the minds of two avid outdoor enthusiasts huddled together inside a tent on a wet windy evening. "There must be a better way," they mused, and set about discussing structures that a group of adventurers could gather in out in the wild when conditions outside were frightful. They wanted a tent with plenty of elbowroom, compact enough to fit in their sea-kayaks, large enough to stand up in and sturdy enough to handle a wood-burning stove. Numerous commercially available products were tried, modified, and tried again. None of these provided an ideal solution: being too small, heavy or unstable.
Finally, one evening, out camping in the snow, inspiration came during a long brain-storming session, and John Mann and Richard Webster envisioned a completely new tent support system. It felt more like a discovery than an invention; it was so basic and simple they couldn't imagine why no one had thought of it before. But exhaustive research and the process of obtaining a U.S. utility patent proved that it was indeed a novel idea.
When the first prototype was erected they were surprised and delighted by how stable and rigid the structure was. The design was so successful that other models followed, each addressing the needs of a particular climate or use. Nomadic Comfort has been developing and field testing these tents for five years in areas as diverse as the rain forests of the Northwest and the deserts of the Southwest and has made numerous technical modifications and improvements to the basic idea.
The round holistic feel of the larger 17' diameter tents resonates with folks who want the utility of a yurt or a tipi, all the comforts of home, are eco-minded, don't want to buy into the whole RV thing and don't have a lot of room for a lot of bulky gear in or on their car, kayak, canoe, dual-sport bike, bicycle, horse, yak, llama or backpack. When field testing the tents fellow campers inevitably ask, where can I get one? Hopefully we will have an answer to that soon.