Inventory of Reprints and Overruns — Fuller Research Foundation

A typed list, issued from R. Buckminster Fuller's own office around mid-1956, of the reprints and printing overruns of published items about his work that the Fuller Research Foundation (6 Burns Street, Forest Hills 75, New York) kept on hand and would send out — several of them for sale. It is at once a bibliography and a glimpse of Fuller's self-archiving habit: the office maintained an inventory of its own press.

About the document

The inventory is six typed pages, scanned from an archival copy (the handwritten "92" on the first leaf is a folder page number). Each item is listed with its physical form — mimeo, offset, overrun, booklet, folder, or composite sheet — together with a page count, a date, and a price where the item was offered for sale. The entries fall into two series:

• Series B (3 items) — Fuller's own compiled bibliographies: the DYMAXION INDEX (a 64-page mimeo book, 1953, $5.00, bibliography of Dymaxion developments and references 1927–1956, bundled with a "Schedule of Lectures, Projects and Exhibitions" and an autobiographical introduction) and two 1956 supplements extending the reference list and the lecture/project schedule.
• Series A (37 items) — third-party press and publications about Fuller, 1932–1956: magazine features, newspaper clippings, news releases, award citations, and reprint booklets.

The latest entries are dated July 1956, which dates the document to roughly mid-to-late 1956. The full transcription lives in the source page.

What it documents

Read as a whole, the inventory is a compressed map of how Fuller's public reputation was assembled across a quarter century:

• The Dymaxion years (1932–1948). It opens with the 1932 Fortune "Industry That Industry Missed" feature (written by Archibald MacLeish, illustrating the Dymaxion House), the 1946 Fortune "Fuller's House" pamphlet, and Robert W. Marks's 1948 Science Illustrated "Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion World" — the early prototype era.
• The geodesic-dome explosion (1951–1956). The bulk of Series A tracks the dome's rapid diffusion: Architectural Forum's 1951 "Bucky Fuller Starts the One Architectural Revolution," the 1953 Ford River Rouge dome in Architectural Forum and Life, the Marine Corps airlift domes, the DEW Line radomes (Life, April 1956), the Brooklyn Dodgers' proposed 750-foot stadium dome (Princeton, 1955), the all-plastic radome, and the dome's appearance at international trade fairs (Triennale di Milano; Kabul, Afghanistan).
• Recognition and the "quarter-century mark." Several 1955 items mark twenty-five years of Dymaxion work: honorary degrees and citations (Michigan, Michigan State), the Marine Corps Award of Merit, a Who's Who in America listing, and the Harvard Engineering Society Bulletin report noting that Fuller's 1929 Harvard Club prediction had now "evolved into realization."
• Authorship that points to later landmarks. Item 8A lists Marks's Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller magazine piece — the seed of the 1960 book — and item 37A is John McHale's 1956 Architectural Review article "Buckminster Fuller," a precursor of McHale's 1962 monograph. The inventory thus catches two major Fuller-documentation projects at their article stage.

Why it matters

Most Fuller bibliographies are retrospective scholarship. This one is contemporaneous and first-party: it is the office's own working ledger of what had been printed about him and what could be mailed to inquirers. It evidences three things at once — the breadth of Fuller's mid-century press, his deliberate practice of indexing and circulating that press (the Dymaxion Index and its supplements), and the small-scale, mail-order way his ideas propagated before the 1960s fame. As a finding aid it remains useful: it names specific articles, dates, and outlets that a researcher can chase down.

Authorship note

Tagged about-buckminster-fuller: the document is a bibliography of material concerning Fuller. It is unusual in being compiled and issued by Fuller's own office (the Series B Dymaxion Index items are Fuller's own work), so it sits at the boundary between by- and about-Fuller — a self-curated record of his reception.

See Also

• The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller (The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller) — Marks's 1960 book; the inventory (items 4A, 8A) lists the magazine pieces behind it and the press reception it narrates
• R. Buckminster Fuller (McHale) (R. Buckminster Fuller) — McHale's 1962 monograph; item 37A is the 1956 Architectural Review article that preceded it
• Montreal Biosphère (Montreal Biosphère) — the geodesic-dome era this inventory's clippings document, at monumental scale
• INDEX — Student Publication of the School of Design (INDEX — Student Publication of the School of Design) — a companion bibliographic finding aid from the same design milieu
• Buckminster Fuller — United States Patents (Buckminster Fuller — United States Patents) — the patents protecting the dome/Dymaxion work this inventory's clippings cover

Sources

• fuller-research-foundation-inventory (raw pointer)
• fuller_research_foundation_inventory/index.md — full transcription of all 40 items (A + B series)