Fifty years ago, R. Buckminster Fuller obtained the patent for his most famous invention’ the geodesic dome, and this month the U.S. Postal Service will issue a commemorative postage stamp honoring the legendary American inventor, architect, engineer, designer, geometrician, cartographer and philosopher. Fuller lived in the Palisades from the late ’70s until his death in 1983. Fuller’s papers are archived at Stanford University, where the first-day-of-issue ceremony will be held on Fuller’s birthday, July 12. Hailed as ‘one of the greatest minds of our times,’ Fuller was renowned for his comprehensive perspective on the world’s problems,’ said Anita Bizzotto, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, U.S. Postal Service, who will dedicate the stamp. Scheduled to join Bizzotto at the ceremony are Fuller’s daughter, Palisadian Allegra Fuller Snyder, professor emerita, Dance and Dance Ethnology at the UCLA, and Dr. Buzz Aldrin, astronaut, Gemini 12 and Apollo 11, among others. “What excites me is the opportunity to introduce many new people to him and get them asking questions about who he was and why he deserves a postage stamp,” said Fuller Snyder, a Palisades resident since 1963, whose parents were frequent visitors to the Palisades before moving here themselves. “He really felt that we had the know-how and the technology to really make life better for all humanity,’ she said. ‘He talked about doing more and more with less and less. He felt that the trends were possible in so many directions, that we had the tools and material to build a lightweight and inexpensive home that would provide more than adequate real shelter for people. Most of the issues that are central now’energy, sustainability, education’he explored very early on. He tried to urge us to know about them, when people weren’t paying attention to them at all.” The stamp artwork is a painting of Fuller by Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965). The painting, which originally appeared on the cover of Time magazine on Jan. 10, 1964, depicts Fuller’s head in the pattern of a geodesic dome. Geodesic domes and a number of his other inventions surround Fuller, including the Dymaxion Car, the 4D Apartment House and several objects and models that reflect the geometric and structural principles he discovered. Born in Milton, Massachusetts, in 1895, Richard Buckminster Fuller belonged to a family noted for producing strong individualists inclined toward activism and public service. ‘Bucky,’ as he came to be called, developed an early understanding of nature during family excursions to Bear Island, Maine, where he also became familiar with the principles of boat maintenance and construction. Fuller served in the U.S. Navy from 1917 to 1919, where he demonstrated an aptitude for engineering. He invented a winch for rescue boats that could pull airplanes out of the ocean in time to save the lives of pilots. Because of the invention, Fuller was nominated to receive officer training at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he further developed his abilities. In 1926, when Fuller’s father-in-law, James Monroe Hewlett, developed a new way of manufacturing reinforced concrete buildings, he and Fuller patented the invention together, earning Fuller the first of his 25 patents. Fuller’s lifelong interests included using technology to revolutionize construction and improve housing. He designed the Dymaxion House, an inexpensive, mass-produced home that could be airlifted to its location; the Dymaxion Car, a streamlined, three-wheeled automobile that could make extraordinarily sharp turns; a compact, prefabricated, easily installed Dymaxion Bathroom; and Dymaxion Deployment Units (DDUs), mass-produced houses based on the silo shape. The word ‘dymaxion’ was coined by store advertisers and trademarked in Fuller’s name. Based on the words ‘dynamic,’ ‘maximum’ and ‘ion,’ it became a part of the name of many of Fuller’s subsequent inventions. In 1927, Fuller made a now-prophetic sketch of the total earth which depicted his concept for transporting cargo by air ‘over the pole’ to Europe. He entitled the sketch ‘a onetown world.’ In 1946, Fuller received a patent for another breakthrough invention: the Dymaxion Map, which depicted the entire planet on a single flat map without visible distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the continents. After 1947, the geodesic dome dominated Fuller’s life and career. Lightweight, cost-effective and easy to assemble, geodesic domes enclose more space without intrusive supporting columns than any other structure, efficiently distribute stress, and can withstand extremely harsh conditions. Based on Fuller’s ‘synergetic geometry,’ his lifelong exploration of nature’s principles of design, the geodesic dome was the result of his revolutionary discoveries about balancing compression and tension forces in building. Fuller applied for a patent for the geodesic dome in 1951 and received it in 1954. Beginning in the late 1960s, Fuller was especially involved in creating World Game, a large-scale simulation and series of workshops he designed that used a large-scale Dymaxion Map to help humanity better understand, benefit from, and more efficiently utilize the world’s resources. After being spurned early in his career by the architecture and construction establishments, Fuller was later recognized with many major architectural, scientific, industrial, and design awards, both in the United States and abroad, and he received 47 honorary doctorate degrees. In 1983, shortly before his death, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, with a citation acknowledging that his ‘contributions as a geometrician, educator and architect-designer are benchmarks of accomplishment in their fields.’ Stamps will be available at U.S. Post Offices throughout the country commencing July 13.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
