The Dymaxion Car of R. Buckminster Fuller is being restored by the company Crosthwaite and Gardiner. [...]
Trevor Blake of synchronofile.com has been providing essential research material on the Dymaxion Car to Crosthwaite and Gardiner since February 2009. C&G researcher Phil King wrote: “More and more details are slowly coming out from the archives and from people like yourself, but I must say your information has been the most informative and the most prolific so far. [...] I know I keep saying it but your help has been fantastic and you have made a difference.”
synchronofile.com has been granted the great honor of announcing the restoration of the Dymaxion Car – because our readers are now invited to help in the project. Can you identify the manufacturer for this component?
Synchronofile: Dymaxion Car Restored
If Buckminster Fuller is known for any effort, it is the effort to provide shelter. But who did Fuller actually provide shelter for? The Lightful House and 4D House existed only on paper. The Dymaxion House existed only as a small scale model. The Dymaxion (Wichita) House existed as two full-scale models (one internal, one external, neither able to be connected to the other). The Dymaxion Deployment Unit did house US armed forces personnel – but the DDU was the invention of Victor C. Norquist, not Buckminster Fuller. The geodesic dome was invented by Walter Bauersfeld who made a number of dome shelters. Fuller never built a dome for sale as a shelter. Of the dozens of books by and about Fuller, of the thousands of articles on his life and work, most of them fail to give a single instance of when Fuller actually provided shelter to anyone. The Buckminster Fuller Bibliography by Trevor Blake is the first book to document that Fuller provided shelter for others with his own direct effort.
The New York Times for 10 September 1932 includes an uncredited article titled “Single Jobless Men to Get Lodging House / Social Worker and Engineer Obtain Use of Tenement for Those Ineligible for City Aid.” The buiding in question was a then-deserted seven-story building located at 145 Ridge Street in New York City, New York. The social worker was Ben Howe and the engineer was Buckminster Fuller. Fuller is described as “editor of the magazine Shelter and head of Structural Study Associates, an engineering firm.” According to the article, the men who were renovating the building were hoping to live in it afterward. They were otherwise ineligible for benefits because they were not the head of a family. The building was to house two hundred and fifty men at a time and serve several thousand during Winter. Lieutenant R. E. Johnson was also involved in this project. He is described as a “former army construction engineer and commander of the United States Ex-Service Men’s Association.” At the time of the article, the shelter was under construction. The building described in this article no longer exists.
Synchronofile: Buckminster Fuller and the Homeless of New York
The most important information on why the Dymaxion House never went into production can be found on pages 85-114 of Pawley’s Buckminster Fuller. Namely, this was due to Fuller’s “fanatical determination to retain complete personal control of the project and refine the house still further before putting it into production.” Although there were estimates of 250,000 Dymaxion Houses to be produced each year and 37,000 unsolicited orders before production began, the only Dymaxion Houses ever made were incomplete or miniature models. Of all the lost inventions of Buckminster Fuller, this is the one that could have done the most good in the world. The Dymaxion House was just as Fortune magazine described it: the industry that industry missed. [...]
R. Buckminster Fuller described himself as a “terrific package of experiences.” The record of Fuller’s uncredited duplication of prior work suggests that he was at times a terrific package of other people’s experiences.
The Lost Inventions of Buckminster Fuller (Part 3 of 3)
The Morgan Motor Company had been producing three-wheeled vehicles in the USA since 1909. The Burney, produced by Streamline Cars, used aviation design principles as early as 1927. The Chrysler Airflow was a streamline, drag-reducing car of 1934, as was the Tatra T77 of 1935.
The earliest newspaper and magazine articles on the subject tend to favor W. Starling Burgess as the main force behind the Car. The Dymaxion Car is first mentioned in print in the New York Times on 1 June 1933. It is described as the creation of W. S. Burgess. The last sentence of the article reads: “Buckminster Fuller, New York architect and engineer, is associated with Mr. Burgess in the project.” By 22 July the New York Times comes to describe Fuller as the inventor of the Dymaxion Car and Burgess as the designer. The Modern Mechanix of October 1933 lists Burgess and Fuller as the designers of the Car. On 22 October the New York Times described the vehicle as the “streamlined, three-wheeled Gulf-Dymaxion Car, designed by W. Starling Burgess and Buckminster Fuller.” At the time, Gulf Oil had purchased advertising space on the side of the Car. Dymaxion World describes Burgess as “an assistant” in the project.
Full Story: Synchronofile
Buckminster Fuller sought patents for his works to document in an enduring form what an individual could invent for the betterment of humanity. A primary resource for Fuller’s patents is the book Inventions, the Patented Works of R. Buckminster Fuller. Inventions serves as the framework for this three-part essay. Comparing the description of Fuller’s work found in that book with this essay will be most instructive. Otherwise uncredited page numbers are from this book. Dates following patent numbers are the date of the patent being granted. Supplementary material comes from The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller and many other sources. Part one of this essay will feature patents found in Inventions that were made by and assigned to Fuller.
All of Fuller’s patents are lost in some way. At minimum, all of Fuller’s patents are lost in that they have expired. Many of Fuller’s patents fail to mention earlier patents by other inventors. Some of Fuller’s patents are lost because they have never gone into production for their intended purpose. The patent for the geodesic dome is to be found under the title “Building Construction,” which has likely caused some researchers difficulty in finding it. Other patents are lost because they are under documented.
Full Story: Synchronofile
Buckminster Fuller expert Trevor Blake has published two must-have books for Buckminster Fuller completeists:
Buckminster Fuller Bibliography
by Trevor Blake
Nearly one thousand entries by and about Buckminster Fuller in print. Extensive and accurate. Traces Fuller’s trajectory from outsider to globe trotting lecturer to cultural icon. Includes information found in no previous book on Fuller. 117 pages, 6″ x 9″, jacket-hardcover binding, cream interior paper (50# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (100# weight), black and white exterior ink. [more information] [purchase]
A Study of Shelter Logistics for Marine Aviation
by Col. Henry C. Lane
In 1954, the US Marine Corps put the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller to the test. The domes were declared “the first major basic improvement in mobile military shelters for the past 2,600 years.” New introduction by Trevor Blake offers background information on this study and expands on its outcome. Rare and out of print for more than fifty years. 144 pages, 8.25″ x 10.75″, casewrap-hardcover binding, white interior paper (50# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (100# weight), black and white exterior ink. [more information] [purchase]
For more information visit The Synchronofile
Of course, you will also have the chance to see Trevor Blake’s presentation The Approximately Omnidirectional Ephemeralization of Richard Buckminster Fuller at Esozone.
Metropolis Magazine interviews John Todd, who recently won the first annual Buckminster Fuller Challenge prize for his proposal to “transform strip-mined lands in Appalachia into a self-sustaining community”:
One of the things that Bucky Fuller said, which has always been a bit of an inspiration for me, is, ‘I don’t imitate nature. I try and understand her operating principles.’ What I have dedicated my life to doing is to try and understand just exactly how nature works, and how those processes might be applied to the design of systems to support the human community. I’ve been inventing and developing living technologies called ‘eco-machines,’ which use living organisms to do the work, everything from the bacteria to the ancient cyanobacteria to the protozoa, to the funghi, to the higher plants, to the animals. The eco-machines have different ecological elements within them that kind of communicate with each other, to create what I call ‘ecological meta intelligence.’ They can self-organize, self-design, and self-repair themselves. The human ecological engineer directs the system towards a particular goal.
Full Story: Metropolis Magazine
(via Bruce Sterling)
See also: Buckminster Fuller Challenge web site
“Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe” is a showing of Fuller’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art from June June 26-Sept. 21, 2008. The occasion has generated a ton of news stories about Fuller. Here are a few:
The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller
Can Fuller be rehabilitated as a 21st century design hero?
A 3-Wheel Dream That Died at Takeoff
Chaos Theory
(via Trevor Blake’s OVO)
If you can’t make it to New York to see the exhibit, perhaps you can make it to these two Portland events:
“The Approximately Omnidirectional Ephemeralization of Richard Buckminster Fuller.” – a presentation by Trevor Blake at Esozone, October 10th.
“R. Buckminster Fuller: The History [and Mystery] of the Universe” – a play about the life and work of Fuller. October 14 – December 7, 2008 at Portland Center Stage.
Previously: Dymaxion Man: Buckminster Fuller essay and slideshow
From the New Yorker:
Slide Show
Essay
(via The Tomorrow Museum)
For even more on Buckminster Fuller, come to Esozone for Trevor Blake’s presentation “The Approximately Omnidirectional Ephemeralization of Richard Buckminster Fuller.”
(Above: preview for recent San Francisco performance of the play)
R. Buckminster Fuller: The History [and Mystery] of the Universe will be appearing and Portland Center Stage from October 14 – December 7, 2008:
An engineer, architect, mathematician, designer, poet, philosopher, motivational speaker, major utopian thinker and inventor of the geodesic dome, Buckminster Fuller was one of the most remarkable minds of the 20th century. Born in 1895, Bucky was way ahead of his time. Refusing to think in conventional ways, he was an innovator, a futurist, and one of the first true global thinkers. This tour-de-force, one-man performance explores Bucky’s life and work through a blend of testimony, lecture, autobiography, poetry, comic antics and video imagery. The play spirals and spins through ideas and experiences as Bucky escorts you on an unforgettable journey.
Portland Center Stage 2008 page.
(via OVO)
According to “Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism,” by Andrew G. Kirk, the mind-blowing photo of our planet was a catalyst for the ecology movement. The Whole Earth Catalog itself became the voice of a new kind of environmental advocacy that, rather than shunning science as nature’s enemy, embraced it as the key that could unlock the door to personal freedom and create a post-scarcity social utopia. Advances like pictures from space, personal computers, geodesic domes and even nuclear power were all part of what became known as the “appropriate technology movement,” for which the Whole Earth Catalog was both a resource and a summary. No tree-hugging Luddite or apocalyptic doomsayer, Brand, Kirk writes, had an optimistic outlook shaped by “a love of good tools, thoughtful technology, scientific inquiry and a Western libertarian skepticism of the government’s ability to take the lead in these areas.” Brand wrote of his own publication, “This is a book of tools for saving the world at the only scale it can be done, one hand at a time.”
Full Story: International Herald Tribune.
(via Trevor’s del.icio.us)
A 42 hour session with Buckminster Fuller. Includes videos and notes.
Everything I Know.
I can’t believe this is real.
Link (via American Samizdat)
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