Who said: "Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."

"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering." - Buckminster Fuller

Born in 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts into the New England tradition of Transcendentalism (he was related to journalist and women's rights activist Margaret Fuller), Richard Buckminster Fuller ("Bucky") grew up playing architect and was intrigued by structural design from a very young age.

In 1927, out of work and grieving over the death of his young daughter, Fuller was on the brink of committing suicide when he instead resolved to make his life "an experiment to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."

Fuller's optimistic and futuristic ideas appealed to people of the Great Depression; they longed for progress and hope after such difficult times. He was one of the earliest proponents of renewable energy sources and swore adamantly that, "There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance." Similarly he believed that the problem of world hunger could be solved within his own lifetime. In the early 1930s he invented a three-wheeled vehicle, which he called the Dymaxion (a term he coined along with the word "synergy"), which he claimed could hold eleven people, travel 120 miles per hour and get 30 miles per gallon. The car drew a lot of press and even H.G. Wells was photographed in front of it for the cover of Saturday Review, and discussed using it in the film version of his story "The Shape of Things to Come." However, after a test-driver died, Bucky lost his potential investors and turned to a different pursuit.

In the summers of 1948 and 1949, while teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Fuller revived a structural design that would be the turning point of his career: the geodesic dome. While the first geodesic dome had been engineered by Walther Bauersfeld just after WWI, Fuller developed the engineering and mathematical principles behind the dome and extended its functionality. In 1949, he successfully built his first geodesic dome with a group of students, and forever changed how the industry viewed architectural efficiency. The geodesic dome is "a complex assemblage of triangles in which all structural members contribute equally to the whole, form a spherical shape, and grow stronger as they grow larger. They can sustain their own weight with no practical limits and have the highest ratio of enclosed area to external surface area for any structure. When complete, the structures - especially very large ones - weigh less than their parts because of the air mass inside the dome; when it's heated warmer than the outside air, it has a net lifting effect like a hot-air balloon." (progressiveengineer.com). He received a patent for his design and since then geodesic domes have been built all over the world, including the famous Epcot landmark at Disneyworld and the basic jungle gym design found on playgrounds everywhere.

While some people dismiss Buckminster Fuller as an eccentric nut, many believe he was a revolutionary inventor. By his death in 1983, he had earned forty-seven honorary doctorates, and continues to be revered by futurists and budding inventors alike.


More sayings of Buckminster Fuller...

A proverb is much matter distilled into few words.

Dictators never invent their own opportunities.

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.

Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.

I look for what needs to be done. After all, that's how the universe designs itself.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Dare to be naive.

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This quote & biography originally ran in an issue of BookBrowse's membership magazine. Full Membership Features & Benefits.