1 Growing Up in New England
2Richard Buckminster Fuller, Jr., was born in Milton, Massachusetts, in 1895.
3 It was a time when the countries of the modern world had begun to separate into two groups, the rulers and the ruled. The larger, richer nations had built great navies, and had used their fighting ships to acquire land that was thousands of miles away. Even the United States, the ‘‘land of the free,’’ was now taking over foreign territory that was being colored ‘‘American Possession’’ in the geography books. It was the finest hour of great empires.
4 It was also the year when a German scientist named Wilhelm Roentgen, while experimenting with the discharge of an electrical spark through an evacuated glass tube, accidentally stumbled upon the source of x-rays. And in 1896, the next year, when Bucky Fuller had reached the ripe old age of one, a French physicist named Henri Becquerel set the scientific world on fire by discovering that an ore of the chemical element uranium gave off a strange, powerful radiation, a phenomenon he called radioactivity. Buckminster Fuller was bom when the century was about to change, and when man’s understanding of his universe was about to change, too.
5 The Fuller name was well-known in Massachusetts history. Bucky’s great, great, great, great grandfather, Thomas Fuller, had been a lieutenant in the British Navy who had sailed for the New World with the Puritans in 1630. All the Fullers, from Thomas down, had been strong-willed and resolute. Timothy Fuller, the grandson of Thomas, had become an ordained minister in Boston. When the colonies were in the process of putting together the document that was to become the Constitution of the United States, Timothy was the Massachusetts delegate to the Federal Constitutional Assembly. He had read the finished document and then had made an impassioned speech against accepting the Constitution without a provision for the prohibition of human slavery. When the provision was voted down, Timothy had refused to sign the Constitution.
6 Bucky’s grandfather, Arthur Buckminster Fuller, was also a minister. Like Timothy, he dared to stand against popular opinion. Arthur preached for the abolition of slavery before the Civil War. When the terrible conflict between the States began, he joined the Union Army as a chaplain. But was that enough for a Fuller? Not content to be just a man who listened to the problems of soldiers, Grandfather Arthur led a charge across the river at bloody Fredericksburg and, in victory, was shot dead.
7 And then there was Bucky’s great-aunt, Margaret Fuller. In 1840, a time when it was considered dangerous for a woman to think about anything other than keeping house and taking care of babies, she became the editor of a famous literary magazine, The Dial. Her friends were people like Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, all famous, all independent thinkers. She was a strong, intelligent woman, self-reliant and tough, and always ready to help genius to flourish. She sailed to Italy and married an Italian marquis there. Even in Europe, her strong spirit showed itself. In 1848, when the city of Rome was being besieged by the French army, she took charge of one of the hospitals. Margaret’s death was a sad one. On June 16, 1850, the ship in which she, her husband, and her child were returning to New York foundered in a storm, almost within sight of the harbor toward which they had been sailing. Almost all the hands and passengers perished.
8 With such a heritage, it was no wonder that Bucky Fuller was a strong-willed child who did not give up easily in the face of difficulties. And he began to encounter problems almost from the first.
9 Most serious was the problem of his vision. Bucky had been born with abnormally farsighted vision, which made him look cross-eyed. But this defect had not been discovered until he reached the age of four. Up to that year, when he was first fitted with corrective glasses, the world had been a kind of large colored blur for Bucky. He could only make out very large patterns —trees, houses, and outlines of people. The details were lost. He recalled later in life, ‘‘I did not see a human eye or a teardrop or a human hair until I was four years old!’’
10 Once he was fitted with the thick, owlish lenses he was to wear the rest of his life, Bucky began to be aware of details. Nevertheless, he never lost his dependence upon the large-pattern clues to the world about him. This happened even in school.
11 At Milton Academy, where Bucky was sent to school, boys were prepared to enter Harvard University —and no bones about it! Apart from the many hours of classwork and study, Milton Academy boys were expected to participate in athletics. Bucky was short and stocky, and he chose football. It was not easy for an opposing lineman to knock him over in a game. And Bucky could run surprisingly fast for a short boy. Having to play without his glasses was the worst ordeal; the outside world swam before him in a kind of mist. But again, the ability to recognize large patterns came to his rescue. He recognized his teammates by their general outlines and behavior; all others were the opposing team. However, if the other side wore jerseys of about the same color, Bucky had trouble distinguishing friend from foe.
12 Bucky enjoyed school, and he loved mathematics best. He could not understand why some of his teachers resented the questions he asked in class. He always seemed to rub his teachers the wrong way.
13 When his math teacher introduced the class to geometry, she placed a chalk point on the blackboard and explained that even though this kind of mark might be called a point, there was really no such thing as a point —it was just an imaginary idea. Then she drew a line and said that the line was made up of a large number of these imaginary points placed side by side.
14 Bucky found it difficult to understand why the teacher would draw a real line on the board and then say it was made up of things that weren’t there. Then, she made things worse by drawing two sets of parallel lines that crossed each other. These lines made up a plane, or a surface that had length and width, but no depth. Planes, too, were imaginary. Finally, she showed how planes could be stacked up, one atop the other, to give a solid figure with length, width, and depth. The solid figure she drew on the blackboard had all equal sides, and she called it a cube.
15 This was too much for Bucky. He raised his hand and informed the teacher that if the cube was made up of points that were imaginary that made up a set of lines that were imaginary that made up planes that were imaginary, then the cube wasn’t there at all, and how could she draw it? Futhermore, he wanted to know how much the cube weighed and if it was hot or cold.
16 The result of that little incident was that Bucky had to force himself to stop asking questions in his mathematics class. Though he got into occasional trouble by saying things in class that seemed outrageous, he passed all his courses, especially science, with flying colors. The only course in which he didn’t get an A was Latin, a language he could never get himself to like. By his junior year, he had managed to make quarterback on the football team. This position gave him a certain amount of prestige. It was no longer necessary to defend himself against those cruel classmates who used to call him ‘‘four-eyes.’’ Like the other students, he began to appreciate the inner strength that a school like Milton Academy gave through its long-established traditions and attitudes. With the other boys, he felt a deep affection for the Academy. But, as much as he liked school, he loved the summers more. For summer meant vacation. And vacation meant Bear Island in Maine!
17 Bear Island! It was a genuine paradise. Bucky’s grandmother had purchased it —a real island in Penobscot Bay —in 1904, along with two other islands. On Bear Island, there were beautiful pebble beaches that sloped upward through spruce groves to a large central hill. You had to wear sneakers when you went bathing, because the spines of the sea urchins on the sea bottom were long and sharp. And the waters of Penobscot Bay were icy cold, even on the hottest summer day.
18 Often, as he looked out to sea, Bucky had seen a comic, moustached face lift dripping out of the water —a real live seal! Usually, there was a staring contest, boy and seal regarding each other intently for what seemed like hours, but was probably only seconds. Then, with a faint plop, the whiskered head would disappear. Bucky was in love with Bear Island and with the sea.
19 On the central hill of the island the frame of a house began to take shape. The house had been designed by a well-known Boston architect, the son of the great poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It stood high on the hill, with the sea visible from three sides. To the family, it became ‘‘The Big House.’’ All the materials for the house, wood, glass, and nails, had been ferried over from the mainland eleven miles away in the old schooner Polly, out of Boston. There was a romantic ship! She had been a privateer during the war of 1812, and now, almost a century later, was still in service.
20 The Penobscot Bay islands had been settled during the early years of colonial America. The Fullers found many gravestones on Bear Island, some almost a hundred and fifty years old. One of the interesting things that had happened on the island about three years before Bucky’s grandmother bought it was the coming of the members of a religious group called the Seventh-Day Adventists. All the members of this sect in the city of Bangor had rowed out to Bear Island one day, and had climbed up into the trees to await the end of the world. After the time of the predicted disaster had safely passed, the Adventists had climbed down from the trees and had rowed back to the mainland. Why had they chosen Bear Island? No one knew.
21 On the island, traditions of living were established that were to remain a long time. Every visitor, whether family, friend, or stranger, had to write his name in the guest book. Every summer, Bucky would write his name a different way. He tried: Richard Buckminster Fuller, Richard B. Fuller, Richard (Bucky) Fuller, and R. Buckminster Fuller. He finally decided that this last combination was the most striking, and from then on always signed his name as R. Buckminster Fuller.
22 At night, the family would gather in the living room of The Big House by the great stone fireplace. The kerosene lamp would be lighted and a fire started. Even in the summer Penobscot Bay nights were sure to be cold. Plans would be made for the following day’s activities: which lobster pots would be put out, or which neighboring island would be visited.
23 One of the luxuries in The Big House was a phonograph, wound by hand, that played thick wax records.
24 How to store the flat discs was a constant problem. If they were simply stacked, it was difficult to locate a particular one. Also, stacking could cause the lower discs to be warped by the pressure of those on top. Bucky thought about this problem for a while; then he designed and built a record holder out of wire strips. These strips were arranged to make pockets in which the individual records could stand on edge and be popped in and out with ease.
25 But most important to Bucky during the days spent on Bear Island was the sea. Sailing came to him as naturally as breathing. He spent most of his leisure time on the waters around the island. Each morning his important job was to row about two miles over to Eagle Island for the mail —a round trip of four miles. Bucky enjoyed rowing, but he began to be irritated by the number of times he had to turn his head around in order to see if he was on course. Anyone who has ever rowed a boat knows that the rower’s back is always turned toward the direction in which the boat is heading. If the weather was foggy, or if the waters were choppy, Bucky had to turn his head at ten-second intervals in order to make sure of his heading.
26 How could he propel a boat forward without an engine and yet be able to face forward? Bucky sat up nights thinking. He drew neat little plans on paper and threw them away. One night, he began to think about the little jellyfish that were so common in the Bay waters. How did one of those jellyfish move? It opened and closed itself, like a little umbrella, pushing the water one way and moving in the opposite direction. Could he fashion some kind of instrument that would imitate the jellyfish?
27 Bucky began to sketch out his thoughts. He fashioned a kind of umbrella on a pole; but it was an inverted umbrella, shaped like a cone. Pushing the pole forward would make the umbrella open and push on the water. If he did this in the stern of the boat, the boat would move forward in the direction opposite to the push. Pulling on the pole would simply collapse the umbrella, which would then slide easily back through the water and be ready for the next push.
28 The next day, Bucky assembled tools and materials. From the sawing and hammering, there emerged a weblike contraption at the end of a long pole. He screwed a large iron ring into the stern of the rowboat and pulled the pole through it, so that the umbrella would be in the water. Anxiously, he pushed the boat away from the pier and lifted the end of the pole. Here was the test.
29 Push —the umbrella opened. Pull —it closed. With ease, the rowboat slid out of the harbor into deep water. Bucky found that steering was a simple matter; all you had to do was push the pole a bit to one side or the other. Across the channel to Eagle Island, he push-pulled his umbrella with ease, never once having to turn his head. He made the usual trip for the mail and back in about half the time it had taken him to row.
30 Inventing became one of Bucky’s passions. First he would carefully design on paper whatever he was going to make, and then, with a pocket knife, or other tools, he would go to work. Sometimes it would be a little model sailboat for his little sister Rosy; at other times it might be a glider that would soar on the wind, or a model house with unusual, original features, as walls that opened outward on hinges. In December of 1903, when Bucky was eight, the Wright brothers had accomplished the unthinkable; they had flown the first gasoline-powered airplane over the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk. Now, airplanes were always in Bucky’s thoughts. His clever fingers were always whittling and patching bits of wood into model planes. It seemed to him that before long, flying would make all other ways of travel seem ancient.
31 So it was on Bear Island, that tiny speck of land in Penobscot Bay where the tide rose and fell fifteen feet each day, that the boy named Bucky Fuller began to be conscious of the ways in which man used his technical knowledge to overcome the challenges posed by nature. All the activities that were going on about him —boat building, boat repairing, fishing with lobster pots, drags, nets, and traps —he saw as things that men did in order to survive in the particular place they lived. With a flash of early understanding, he realized that men were able to survive most successfully not merely by using the tools and experience they already had, but by designing new tools and new ways of using them.
32 Bucky had already begun to think in those patterns of original design that were to shape the events of his later life.