The vast range of works by the Russian engineer Vladimir Schuchov (1853–1939), a Chief Engineer of the Company of Alexander Bary, includes patented inventions in steam boiler design, petroleum engineering, shipbuilding and metal structures. Schuchov’s contribution to structural design was embodied in the sequential development of the light construction principles, he is reputed as an inventor of a new structural type – the spatial lattice network. To trace the development of a novel engineering idea from the concept level to the advertised know-how and to analyze the forms of knowledge outcome is a challenge of the paper. It is done with a précised attention to the realities of the Russian Industrial development at the end of the nineteenth century.

In 1897 Schuchov published the work Optimal Truss, where he analyzed the weight limits of the truss system and proved the feasibility of a new construction type. The characteristic feature of the new structural principle, offered by Schuchov, was the absence of any type of roof-truss or girder, which were substituted for a lattice network of angle or Z-profiles for arch roofs and for flat bars for suspension roofs. In order to test the structural behavior and assembly methods for the novel structures, experimental real-size prototypes were erected at the Steam-Boiler Factory of Alexander Bary in Moscow, which served as means to verify Suchovs’s principles in a practical application. In 1896 the structures were represented to the public at the All-Russian exhibition in Nizhny-Novgorod: Alexander Bary built it on his own means to promote the inventions of Schuchov at the most meaningful public event of the Russian Empire. Thus, the Optimal Truss, published one year after the Exhibition and premised by the long preparatory and research process, referred as to the analytical, so to the experimental facts and addressed to examples, familiar to the wide audience.

In summary, the paper reveals the consequent development of a new structural type, which included the collection and analysis of engineering data and the construction of real-size prototypes. At the same time it researches the spread of knowledge, like the presentation at the exhibition and the publication of the engineering pamphlet. The parallel presentation of the technological and market realities illustrates whether the Russian construction industry was mature enough to encourage the undertaken experiments.