21 The R. Buckminster Fuller Archives
2 Allegra Fuller Snyder, Professor Emerita
3 What are archives? I’m sure as we all look around our desks at the undistinguished piles of paper, some of which eventually find their way into more orderly files, we have no thought of considering this material as an archive. Yet most archives are born from these chaotic beginnings. Most archives come about through hindsight. We come to realize, or others do, that certain parts of those endless papers may be unique and may document what others will find of use and interest.
4 What is fascinating about my father and his archives is that it didn’t happen like this at all. I think the seeds were sown through an extraordinary event that occurred when he was four years old, an age when we are already very much aware of the world around us. At four he received his first pair of glasses. Until that moment his eyes had been so farsighted that all about him was but a blur. With this event he realized that the world he had existed in for four years was a very different one from the world that he now encountered when he put his glasses on. It made a fundamental change in his thinking as well as his seeing.
5 He became aware that change is critical to our understanding and experience. And that change, and the understanding of change, has something to do with the lens we are wearing. It was many years later that he came to recognize that ‘‘99.9 per cent of all that is new, transpiring in human activity and interaction with nature, is taking place within the realms of reality which are utterly invisible, inaudible, unsmellable, untouchable by human senses.’’ That ‘‘Man is only impressed by the things he can see. We can’t see the hands of the clock move. We can’t see the tree grow. We can’t see the stars move. We can’t see the atoms move. We find man really not accrediting all the continual evolutionary change.’’ It is only with new glasses, with lenses provided by electromagnetic sensors, micro- and macrophotography, telescopes and microscopes, that these new realities begin to exist for us.
6 From that moment, he was trying, in his youthful ways, to understand and document change. He seemed to feel his fife process would hold a demonstration of that change. He was born in 1895, ‘‘a suburban New Englander, born in the Gay Nineties,’’ and stepped into a new century almost immediately. He was aware that life was fundamentally changing as he was living it. 1895 was the year automobiles were introduced, and wireless telegraph and the automatic screw machine invented. It was the year X-rays were discovered, and shortly thereafter both the North and South Poles were discovered. He knew somehow that it was important to document those changes. ‘‘Most children like to collect things. At four I started to collect documents of my own development.’’ But his own development was counterbalanced with the changes he was continuing to note occurring around him. As a freshman at Harvard in 1913 he felt that ‘‘the subway, which then opened to connect Cambridge and Boston by a seven-minute ride, was a harbinger of an entirely new distance-time relationship of humanity and its transforming environment.’’
7 He recalled, ‘‘By 1917 I was convinced that a much greater environmental transformation was beginning to take place in our generation’s unfolding experience.’’ And he determined to employ his ‘‘already rich case history’’ as a method for understanding that change. A year later he determined how; in 1918-1919 he had the task of organizing official records for the U.S. Navy, and he was asked to organize these records chronologically. ‘‘My experience before the Navy was that people kept static kinds of files in terms of names and topics, but in the Navy important records were kept chronologically. I thought it might be interesting if I took my own private papers and put them into chronological order. I did so; and I asked my mother for any papers she had regarding me and I put them all into order too.’’
8 He called the results of his effort the Chronofile.
9 The Chronofile did chronicle the early events of his life, but in 1927, this chronicle was to become what he regarded as his critical ‘‘tool.’’ The concept of tools or artifacts was central to my father’s emerging thinking. He understood tools as ‘‘externalizations of originally integral functions, aiding the evolutionary process and the regeneration of the species.’’ He saw this tool, the Chronofile, as externalizing his thinking.
10 He determined to create this tool ‘‘by methodical and chronological inventorying of all the human communications in which I was personally involved.’’ This was to be a very rigorous record, a scientific experiment, and he saw himself as ‘‘Guinea Pig B’’ as he committed himself to this very large-scale experiment. ‘‘I saw clearly that I must keep my own comprehensive records—records being a prime requisite of scientific exploration.’’ This was a documentation of process. He was not concerned with an end product. He was interested in not looking back but in seeing forward, which prompted him later to realize, ‘‘I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process.’’
11 He learned through the Chronofile ‘‘to see myself very objectively …to see myself as others see me.’’ The Chronofile ‘‘persuaded me, ten years after its inception, to start my life as nearly new as is humanly possible to do.’’ ‘‘In 19271 gave up entirely the idea of trying to use my capabilities to develop special economic and physical advantage for [my family] and instead committed myself to the proposition that if those whom I love were indeed the kind of human beings I thought them, their true happiness could only develop through an awareness that our efforts were always in the direction of progressively increasing advantage for all humans without any biases whatsoever.’’
12 The details of the Chronofile also charted for him some of the major changes he was seeking to understand, such as ‘‘humanity’s epochal graduation from the inert, materialistic 19th into the dynamic 20th century’’—a change which, he said, ‘‘terminated Sir Isaac Newton’s normally ‘at rest’ world of myriadly and remotely isolated hybrid cultures, to which change was anathema; and opened Einstein’s normally ‘dynamic’ omni-integrating world culture to which change has come to seem evolutionarily inevitable.’’ The Chronofile became ‘‘the scientific documentation of the emergent realization of the era of accelerating acceleration of progressive ephemeralization.’’
13 I remember well when the first bound volumes of the Chronofile took their central place on our bookshelves, in our small apartment on 88th Street in New York. They almost overwhelmed us, but they were very impressive, with their brown leather bindings and soft green covers. The bindings displaying the words ‘‘DYMAXION CHRONOFILE, R. Buckminster Fuller,’’ stamped in gold. They arrived just after he had published his first book, Nine Chains to the Moon, in 1938, and totaled sixty-seven volumes. To an eleven-year-old they were an important presence.
14 These turned out to be the only bound volumes, for the incoming data began to be almost as uncontainable as was water for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The Chronofile alone could not incorporate all the relevant work, so interrelated collections began to emerge, including drawings and blueprints; models; moving picture and television footage; wire- and tape-recorded records; photo negatives, photographs, and 35mm projection slides; news clippings; and posters. Of key importance were the multistage copies of his manuscripts and typescript versions of published books and many published magazine articles. There were also such special and specific projects as the ‘‘Inventory of "World Resources, Human Trends and Needs’’ and the World Game records. And not to be overlooked were all his financial records. Finally, in the 1950s, indexes of the archival material were added, which were carefully maintained until his death in 1983.: All of the above materials are now known as the R. Buckminster Fuller Archive.
15 Maintenance of the archives—their safekeeping and updating—was solely the responsibility of my father and, later, his small staff. He found he could not maintain a sufficient staff to open them to the public. Their full significance could not, therefore, be realized at the time. In 1976 they were formally given to me, but my commitment was to seeing that they remained at my father’s office, where he and his staff could have easy access to them at all times. This was the situation at the time of his death.
16 After his death I was confronted with a quandary and a challenge. I wanted the archives to remain the ‘‘tool’’ that my father had always understood them to be: not static, but dynamic, and something that inspired a sense of process in others. But who could make the best use of these tools, and how? My son and I developed the Buckminster Fuller Institute, which I felt initially might make use of this tool; but the reality of a very limited staff, who were overwhelmed by the tasks of maintenance and utilization, soon made it clear that this was not a reasonable answer. Over the years I had the pleasure of visiting such people and organizations as Jonas Salk, with his wonderful vision (never realized) of a Salk Institute for the Humanities; the Canadian Centre for Architecture; the Ford Museum in Dearborn; and Princeton University. Could any of them make full use of the archives? Would any of them be interested in them and willing to understand them as tools for action rather than static documents and memorabilia?
17 Some of the things I was concerned about:
18 —That there be an acknowledgment of my father’s unique thinking/learn- ing process. I was looking for a place that would respect a person like Bucky
19 Fuller, who was self-taught and had no formal credentials in any area, even though later he was to hold forty-seven honorary doctorates.
20 —One of the most important criteria was that the archives always be kept as an integrated whole—given the importance of ‘‘comprehensivity’’ in my father’s work and thinking. And this meant finding the archives a final home that was itself comprehensively oriented, not limited by specialization. My father was constantly looking for connections, breaking boundaries between named areas of specialization, and urging consideration of cross-connections between fields of interest.
21 —That the place itself have a sense of history and continuity, which would be a guarantee for the future as well as for respect of the past. My father’s sense of change always reflected the dynamic between past (a sense of history) and future. He saw them as equally important.
22 —That there be a sense of compatibility with my father’s strong vision for the future. I wanted the repository for the archives to be a place of creative imagination, with the capabilities to guide and steer the utilization of the archives in a way that would maximize their impact as a resource for education and inspiration. I hoped this would be a place that would assist all of us in ‘‘being optimally effective for all of humanity’’ as the Chronofile had initially inspired my father to be.
23 —I was looking for a place that supported both research and education comfortably. Most institutions of higher learning declare they are research oriented because their concept of education is limited. I find that research is education, a fundamental aspect thereof, and its outcome enlightens the educational process. In the longest run I wanted to feel that the institution holding the Archives would respect the idea that education is as fundamental to the human process as breathing, and as continuous.
24 In talks with Sir Harry Kroto (Nobel Prize co-laureate for the discovery of the buckyball) about this subject, he shared with me his feelings that research agendas in physics and chemistry are driven by an applied focus. He has been critical of this approach, feeling strongly that pure research should be encouraged, the results being totally unpredictable, perhaps opening the doors to something completely new and very important. There is no question in my mind that thinking should be unencumbered by expectation and outcome, but I find sometimes research (as articulated by higher education) is without passion. To engage in an exquisite study that ignores any relation to a larger whole, ‘‘the big picture,’’ is a concern to me. But this brings us full circle, to the recognition that application and utilization are less effective when education and research do not inspire them. It was my conclusion that the Archives should be available to researchers, scholars, and students at all levels, and certainly to the public at large.
25 In August 1999, the Archives were placed in the concerned and loving care of Stanford University and its Special Collections. With this action all my hopes and visions for the Archive are in process of becoming a reality.
27 The following are excerpts from the Stanford press release issued on July 20, 1999:
28 The Stanford University Libraries announced the acquisition of the R. Buckminster Fuller Archive. The collection comprises the personal papers and working records of Buckminster Fuller, the architect, engineer, inventor, philosopher, author, cartographer, geometrician, futurist, teacher and poet, as assembled during his lifetime and maintained since his death in July 1983.
29 The Fuller Archive is known as a collection of incomparable comprehensiveness—truly an archive of 20th-century man—and may well be the most extensive known personal archive in existence. ‘‘I regard this archive as one of the most important acquisitions during my career,’’ said Michael Keller, university librarian and director of Academic Information Resources at Stanford, who evaluated the collection while the university considered its acquisition. He said the Archive is particularly important because it is useful for research and teaching across multiple disciplines. These kinds of primary resources, ‘‘the personal papers, the early manuscripts and notes, the correspondence and the record of the critical development and reception of ideas, are invaluable documents for research of our programs in the history of science, technology and ideas,’’ Keller said.
30 Fuller received numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the Queen Elizabeth Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, the Gold Medal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award given by the U.S. government. The Buckminster Fuller Archive occupies approximately 2,000 linear feet of archival shelf space, spans almost eight decades, and thoroughly records almost every aspect of Fuller’s life and works. Included in the Archive are 900 published and unpublished manuscripts; a ‘‘Chronofile’’ of more than 200,000 letters; approximately 4,000 hours of film, video, and audio tapes; 15,000 photographs documenting projects; 500 boxes of project reports and research; more than 150,000 research news clippings; the Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and Needs; models; and memorabilia.
31 Fuller meticulously and self-consciously constituted the Archive and, just as meticulously, organized it, making obvious efforts to gather documentation that related to his life and career to supplement the papers that were generated by his own activities. The result is as complete a record of one private individual’s life and work as could ever reasonably be found, Keller said.
32 The value of the Fuller Archive must be seen in relation to Fuller’s achievements and to his association with other creative figures of importance to modern cultural life and thinking, ranging from Gropius to Einstein to Gandhi, Keller said. The collection is said to include every substantive piece of paper, film, photography, or tape that passed across Fuller’s desk in his lifetime, resulting in the most complete possible documentation of his activities and associations, his thoughts and his projects.
33 ‘‘The collection is a significant resource for the vast range of ideas, subjects, and people with whom Fuller was concerned, and the Stanford University Libraries are its ideal new home for further study and exploration,’’ said As- sunta Pisani, associate university librarian for collections and services at Stanford. She noted that the collection will be of tremendous research value to faculty and students in a large number of disciplines, ranging across the humanities, the social sciences and the sciences.
34 Work to organize and fully describe the collection will begin as soon as possible, said Robert Trujillo, head of the Department of Special Collections at Stanford, where the Fuller Archive will be located. Trujillo expects that the collection will become available to scholars within a relatively brief period of time.
35 Working with Buckminster Fuller from The Artifacts o/R. Buckminster Fuller
37 It was my privilege to study with R. Buckminster Fuller in 1949 at the Institute of Design in Chicago. It was ‘‘Bucky’’ who first stimulated my interest in the development of new structural systems. He also made me aware that to continue to build structures with slow, inefficient technology with a huge waste of precious raw materials was a luxury society could no longer afford: the impact of man on his environment is becoming more important than the impact of the environment on man. Fuller faced such issues during his early studies of great circle and geodesic dome geometry. These developments were concerned primarily with dome framing techniques, and, more particularly, with the geometry of such frames.
38 The Early Work of D. L. Richter
39 It was my conviction that while a geodesic framing system had many advantages from the standpoints of structure and production, it represented only part of the enclosure solution. Given a good structural dome frame, some form of cover is still required to make it a shelter enclosure. Furthermore, if this cover, or skin, is made tough enough to act as a secure barrier between interior contents and exterior environment, it might also be used to carry a share of the structural burden. I. reasoned that if it were shaped properly, the skin might replace the frame totally and become the complete structure.
40 This concept led to a series of independent studies on the effects and factors involved in compound curved shell shapes. The research studies expanded to include many different forms of shaped surfaces, such as nonspherical domes, involute and hyperbolic paraboloid shells, as well as many other shapes without names. These dome models are indicative of the early research into compound-curved shapes developed in 1949.
41 It was recognized that while such research discoveries are vital, it is equally important to develop them into real products for a real world. This pioneering design work has resulted, over the past twenty-five years, in many dome structures that are being used throughout the world, from Alaska to the Antarctic. The first opportunity to employ these new stressed-skin principles combined with a space truss system and geodesic dome geometry came in 1956, when I was with the research and development division of Kaiser Aluminum. The problem posed was to design and fabricate a 150-foot dome of all aluminum construction for erection in Hawaii.
42 The structural system of space truss and stress-skin development for the Hawaii Dome Project was patented and erected by Kaiser Aluminum. The first of many such domes was designed for the Hawaiian Village Convention Center built in 1957. Several years were required to develop the Hawaiian geodesic dome structures for use in more severe climates. To facilitate their realization, we designed permanent tooling and trained personnel in the new construction techniques.
44 Following the success of the Hawaiian projects, I formed Temcor with two others in Torrance, California. Temcor was fortunate to have R. Buckminster Fuller as a member of our board of directors until his death in 1983. In Torrence, we designed a full line of pentagonal and hexagonal geodesic domes in sizes up to 232 feet in diameter. Our success in the myriad problems related to design fabrication and erection is perhaps best exemplified by the construction of a triple geodesic dome sports complex in 1973 in upstate New York. It comprises an interconnected cluster of three hexagonal-shaped domes, each having a clear span of 232 feet and a height of 62 feet at the apex.
45 The more than 33,000 gold-anodized aluminum panel and strut components for the three domes were engineered and fabricated to precise tolerances at Temcor’s manufacturing plant in Torrance and shipped to Elmira, New York, for assembly. They were erected at ground level around the base of a lifting tower and raised into place. After a dome was totally assembled around the tower, it was hoisted and secured to previously prepared supports, and the lifting tower was then removed.
46 It is rather significant that aluminum geodesic domes designed and manufactured by Temcor have been selected in competition with nongeodesic domes of steel, concrete, wood, and fiberglass plastic—an excellent proof of the coordinated design, fabrication, and erection indicated by Bucky Fuller many years earlier.
47 Temcor also manufactures two other types of patented dome structure that employ geodesic great circle geometry: the Crystogon structures and PolyFrame domes, each of which has its own unique applications.
49 Crystogon domes employ triangular panels of acrylic secured to a framework of extruded aluminum. The transparent or translucent plastics are nonstruc- tural: they do not carry loads from the aluminum dome frame. The inherent stiffness of the geodesic frame has been proven to be particularly important for this product. Unlike the Expo ’67 dome in Montreal, Temcor Crystogon domes have a single layer of geodesic framing plan, yet they can be built in spans up to 250 feet.
50 Temcor Crystogon domes are now employed in a variety of applications including arboretums and aviaries, skylights in restaurants, all-weather swimming pool covers, and other public buildings. Perhaps the most dramatic Crystogon installation to date is the 150-foot diameter Tropical Botanical Center Exhibition Building in Des Moines, Iowa.
52 In contrast to the Crystogon, the Temcor PolyFrame dome employs wide- range beams of extruded aluminum that are covered with flat, triangular aluminum panels. As with the Crystogon, the nonstructural panels are designed primarily to provide protective covering and contribute only secondarily to the strength of the dome frame.
53 The PolyFrame domes are widely used for bulk storage covers, wastewater treatment plants, sports facilities, and special structures such as the famous South Pole PolyFrame and Long Beach Spruce Goose domes. Its advantage as a tank cover is obvious when one considers that a concrete dome for a typical 150-foot diameter tank weighs about 360 tons. A steel cover for the same tank weights about 175 tons. But an aluminum PolyFrame dome weighs only 18 tons—just five percent of the concrete and ten percent of the steel ones. Part of this efficiency is the direct result of using geodesic geometry.
55 To illustrate the merits of geodesic structures, one could compare them with the computer analyses of three other dome framing systems. In this assessment, all four domes were made as nearly equal as their individual geometries would permit. All four domes analyzed had the same base diameter, the same spherical radius, and the same number of gusset, or nodal, points interconnected by struts following their four different geometries: geodesic, lattice, Lamella, and Schwedler.
56 A true geodesic geometry does not employ concentric lesser circles. This is the key feature to look for when determining whether the dome geometry is fully geodesic. The great circle arcs in the geodesic dome example of the accompanying figure extend from the base ring on one side of the dome to a corresponding point on the other side. The space truss formed by the three sets of intersecting great circles yields surprisingly uniform, almost equilateral triangles.
57 The plan view of the lattice geometry dome has framing struts that follow intersecting, spiral-like patterns that connect the base ring to the concentric inner rings and the apex of the dome. None of the framing lines in the lattice dome follows a great circle arc.
58 A typical Lamella geometry also has the horizontal lesser circles concentric with the base ring. The Lamella dome has an advantage over the previous two systems, because the clutter of members intersecting at the apex has been reduced. The triangles formed between rings and struts are also more nearly equal in size.
59 In the plan view geometry of the Schwedler, or radial rib, dome, you will notice that a group of frame members extend from the base tension ring to the apex in great circle arcs. The base ring and the three concentric inner rings are lesser circles. Virtually all the commonly used nongeodesic dome frame systems have a number of such lesser circles in concentric rings. In the Schwedler dome, the diagonal framing members required to stabilize the dome have been shown as dashed lines. These diagonals are required to make the dome a completely triangulated three-dimensional space truss.
60 Although other geometric configurations and variations have been studied, these four basic types are the most representative. For our computer analysis of the four types, the following equalizing criteria were used:
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
61 All domes are the same overall size—that is, 100 feet in diameter and 14 feet high.All domes
have sixty-one nodes (strut connections).All domes used tubular struts of the same diameter to
make up the frame.The results of our computer analysis are shown in Table 1. Although the
Schwedler dome without diagonals looks rather good under uniform symmetrical load, the
unbalanced loading caused by simulated snow and wind is far more important. Under such
loading, the Schwedler dome without diagonals would only support 12 p.s.f. on one-half the
dome, with six pounds distributed over the other half. By adding the diagonals to the Schwedler
dome, its strength was more than doubled. This increase in strength was accomplished by
reducing the tubular frame wall thickness and without increasing the total weight of the
dome.
62
125 The lattice dome will support 20 p.s.f. under the unbalanced condition, the Lamella, 28 p.s.f. By contrast, the geodesic configuration will support a full 45 p.s.f. as a symmetrical load over the total surface, or a nonsymmetrical loading of 40 p.s.f. on one side and 20 p.s.f. on the other.
127 A special application of the PolyFrame dome, and one that has received worldwide attention, is the U.S. Navy’s South Pole Station. This huge, allaluminum dome is 50 feet high and 164 feet in diameter, and serves as a giant weather break to protect the. Navy’s science headquarters, communications center, and crew’s quarters.
128 The lightweight Temcor dome was selected for this difficult task because it could be broken down readily into coded components for air shipment and assembly under frigid working conditions. Moreover, the PolyFrame dome is inherently capable of withstanding heavy winds and drifting snow. The South Pole Dome was designed to withstand winds of 125 miles per hour, uniform loads from ten feet of snow on top, and, even more importantly, unbalanced loadings of thirty feet of snow on one side.
129 PolyFrame Covers the Goose
130 Probably the most significant verification of geodesic efficiency in dome structures is the Temcor PolyFrame dome erected to house and exhibit Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose aircraft in Long Beach, California. Housing without damaging the world’s largest wooden airplane of World War H vintage presented some very difficult structural and logistics problems. The Spruce Goose has a wing span of 320 feet and a tail section that stands 100 feet above the ground. The Temcor dome was selected to be the permanent home of the flying boat instead of steel, wood, concrete, or fabric structures. The PolyFrame dome, including its foundations, saved the builder well over a million dollars—a great verification of the fact that quality need not be sacrificed to reduce costs when good design and geodesic principles are employed.
131 The 415-foot-diameter aluminum dome required to house the flying boat rests directly on the foundation at ground level and rises 130 feet at the center to clear the aircraft. Unique erection procedures were required to realize this dome. Notice the large temporary opening left in the side of the dome to allow passage of the flying boat. One view clearly shows the special geodesic geometry as modified for the construction requirements.
132 Bucky Fuller expressed to me complete satisfaction with the design during a visit to the site of the Temcor Spruce Goose dome. The dome represents the state of the art in efficient structures, as it requires only 0.75 ounce of material per cubic foot of enclosed volume.
133 These and other construction concepts brought forth by Bucky Fuller will become more feasible with each passing day. My work and success with Temcor is only a beginning.
134 Describing himself as a layman, E. J. Applewhite can also be described as Bucky's first teenage admirer. He has known Fuller and the family for more than sixty years and was involved with the Wichita Dymaxion house. He worked with the CIA as Deputy Inspector General and Chief of the Inspection Staff. Applewhite spent five years with Fuller, working on two of his major publications, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking and Synergetics 2: Further Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking. Applewhite has also been a member of the board of the Buckminster Fuller Institute.
135 Applewhite's contribution was originally published in The Chemical Intelligencer (volume 1,3, pp. 52-54) in 1995 and is reprinted by permission of the author. It is such an interesting article that I asked to reprint it in its entirety. It tells the story of the discovery of C60 by the 1996 Nobel Prize laureates Harold W. Kroto, Robert F. Curl, and Richard E. Smalley and their naming the molecule after Bucky.