Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Guide to the R. Buckminster Fuller Papers
M1090
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Description
The papers of this 20th century polymath contain his personal archive the Dymaxion Chronofile, manuscripts, drawings and audio-visual
materials relating to his career as an architect, mathematician, inventor and social critic.
Background
Richard Buckminster Fuller was born July 12, 1895, in Milton, Mass. Fuller was descended from a long line of New England Nonconformists,
the most famous being his great-aunt, the Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. Fuller's father died when he was a child, and
the young Bucky-as he was known throughout his life-grew up in genteel but straightened circumstances. Among his extended
family, at Milton Academy, and then at Harvard University, he was a bright but marginal figure. He was suspended from Harvard
after his freshman year, then expelled the next year; he never earned a degree. Instead, like his fellow New Englander Herman
Melville, a yard-arm-or in Fuller's case, a rescue boat-would be his Harvard and Yale. During World War I, he received a commission
in the U.S. Navy, and spent a year in officer candidate school at the Naval Academy. The blend of practical and theoretical
knowledge he found at Annapolis, and an officer culture that valued technical skill and hard work, contrasted strongly with
the Brahmin decadence he had encountered in Cambridge. Even decades later he still remarked on the difference.
Extent
1200 linear ft.
Restrictions
Property rights reside with the repository. Literary rights reside with the creators of the documents or their heirs. To obtain
permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Public Services Librarian of the Dept. of Special Collections.