R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER: 1895-1983

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Issue # 83 - September/October 1983

R. Buckminster Fuller died at his wife Anne's bedside on Friday, July 1, 1983 ... 11 days short of putting in 88 years on this planet. Thirty-six hours later, Anne Hewlett Fuller?Bucky's companion and most ardent supporter for over 65 years-passed away, never having regained consciousness from the coma that brought her husband to her side at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.

To capsulize Fuller's achievements and ideas in a few hundred words would be an impossible task. Over two dozen books and 25 U.S. patents attest to the seemingly boundless energy he put forth through even his later years (his most recent book, Grunch of Giants, was published just this year).

We hope those of you who are familiar with Fuller's work will find that the following short examples rekindle your enthusiasm for Bucky's far-reaching vision ... and, if you're a relative newcomer to his ideas, we hope that our sampling will encourage you to delve deeper.

Bucky was born on July 12, 1895?in Milton, Massachusetts- and his ancestors included the transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, the first publisher (in her literary magazine Dial) of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. At age six, Bucky (as he preferred to be called) designed the tetrahedronal octet truss, using toothpicks and dried peas, but it took another 60 years for him to patent the design as the Octetruss.

In 1917 Buckminster Fuller took Anne Hewlett's hand in marriage. The couple's first child, Alexandra, was born in 1918, and-in an important way?Bucky's observation of, and love for, his daughter helped form his concepts of the perfection of childhood and of humanity's untapped potential. Alexandra's death, in 1922, precipitated the worst period in Bucky's life ... and a catharsis that would eventually lead to a complete revision of his way of thinking.

On a windy winter night on the Chicago shore of Lake Michigan, while on the verge of suicide, he reasoned: "You do not have the right to eliminate yourself; you do not belong to you. You belong to the universe."

Through 1926 and 1927, Fuller gave up speaking to anyone other than his new baby, Allegra, and sought to purge his mind of the precepts he'd developed in his first 30 years. In short, he attempted to become "the most unlearned person in the world".

"If I am to be 50 years ahead of my time I shall be safe. No one will interfere with me because I'll be so far ahead that I will pose no threat to all the people who have a vested interest in opposing progress. They'll just call me a nut."

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