Van Tassel was not a crank with no credentials. He had worked as an aircraft mechanic and flight inspector, including time with Howard Hughes's operation. He understood structures, tolerances, and engineering. When he began constructing the Integratron in 1954, he applied real skills to an extraordinary purpose: a 38-foot-tall cupola, 55 feet in diameter, built without metal fasteners, designed as a machine for biological rejuvenation, anti-gravity experimentation, and time travel. Construction costs came partly from the Giant Rock Spacecraft Conventions — annual UFO gatherings that drew thousands to the desert — and partly from donations that included funds from Howard Hughes himself. The dome's main structure was complete by around 1959. Van Tassel kept working on its interior mechanisms until his sudden death in 1978, the machine never having been activated to his satisfaction.

After Van Tassel died, the Integratron passed through a series of owners and fell into disrepair. The dome sat in the Landers desert, strange and unused, for decades. Then, in the early 2000s, three sisters — Joanne, Nancy, and Patty Karl — purchased it. They discovered something Van Tassel apparently had not fully appreciated: the structure's acoustic properties. The all-wood construction, the dome geometry, the absence of metal — together they created what the sisters describe as an acoustically perfect space. They began offering sound baths, meditation-like sessions with 22 quartz crystal bowls producing binaural tones. The Integratron acquired a new identity without losing its old one.

The building is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places — an unusual honor for a structure built to Venusian specifications. It continues to be stewarded by the Karl sisters and their adult children. In 2008, the Arctic Monkeys recorded part of their song "Secret Door" here. People drive long distances to lie on the wooden floor and let crystal bowl tones wash over them, not necessarily because they believe in rejuvenation, but because the dome produces an experience unlike any other room they have been in. The desert silence outside amplifies what happens within. Van Tassel built the machine for one purpose. The desert found another use for it.