Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller ( July 12, 1895, Milton, MA, US – July 1, 1983, Los Angeles, CA, US) .

   In 1927, at age 32, Fuller lost his job as president of Stockade Building Systems, a business which aimed to provide affordable, efficient housing. The Fuller family had no savings, and during the autumn of 1927, Fuller contemplated suicide by drowning in Lake Michigan, so that his family could benefit from a life insurance payment. Fuller said that he had experienced a profound incident which would provide direction and purpose for his life. He felt as though he was suspended several feet above the ground enclosed in a white sphere of light. A voice spoke directly to Fuller, and declared:

"From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others." In 1927 Fuller resolved to think independently which included a commitment to "finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more"
   Fuller taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina during the summers of 1948 and 1949, serving as its Summer Institute director in 1949.  At Black Mountain, with the support of a group of professors and students, he began reinventing a project that would make him famous: the geodesic dome. 

 The Montreal Biosphère, formerly the American Pavilion of Expo 67, by R. Buckminster Fuller

Although the geodesic dome had been created, built and awarded a German patent on June 19, 1925 by Dr. Walther Bauersfeld, Fuller was awarded United States patents. Fuller neglected to cite that the self supporting dome had already been built some 26 years prior in his patent applications. Although Fuller undoubtedly popularized this type of structure he is mistakenly given credit for its design.

Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, such as solar- and wind-derived electricity. He hoped for an age of "omni-successful education and sustenance of all humanity".