10 Important Dates

11895^R- Buckminster Fuller, Jr., is born in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of Richard and Caroline Fuller.

21899 Young Fuller’s first pair of glasses corrects his extremely poor vision.

31904 Grandmother Andrews buys Bear Island off the coast of Maine.

41910 Fuller’s father, after a long illness, dies on Bucky’s fifteenth birthday.

1913.: Fuller graduates from Milton Academy and enters Harvard in the fall.
1914.: Expelled from Harvard for ‘‘irresponsible behavior,’’ Fuller works in a Canadian cotton mill for several months. He is readmitted to Harvard in the fall.
1915.: Expelled again from Harvard, Fuller works as meat handler for Armour and Company in New York City.

1917.: Fuller enlists in the navy for World War I service. He marries Anne Hewlett.
1918.: Anne Hewlett Fuller gives birth to a daughter, Alexandra.
1919.: Fuller resigns his commission as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy because of Alexandra’s poor health. He becomes assistant export manager for Armour.

51922 Alexandra’s death devastates Fuller. He forms the Stockade Building System to manufacture and sell a new kind of building block.

61927 Forced out of Stockade, Fuller goes through an emotional crisis and nearly commits suicide. He dedicates his life to the service of humanity. A second daughter, Allegra, is born.

71929 The word ‘‘Dymaxion’’ becomes Fuller’s trademark, and is first used for his revolutionary ‘‘House on a Pole.’’

81933 The Dymaxion Vehicle is designed and built.

91938Nine Chains to the Moon, Fuller’s first book, is published. He leaves a two-year stint at the Phelps Dodge Corporation to join the staff of Fortune magazine.

101941 Fuller gives up drinking and smoking.

1943.: While working at the Bureau of Economic Warfare, Fuller develops the Dymaxion Map.
1944.: Fuller moves to Wichita, Kansas, to produce a new version of the Dymaxion House. He abandons the project in 1946.

111949 The geodesic dome is successfully demonstrated at Black Mountain College.

121953 Fuller’s first commercial dome is erected for the Ford Motor Company.

13 IMPORTANT DATES

141959 Fuller becomes Research Professor at Southern Illinois University.

151962 Fuller is named Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.

161967 A huge Fuller dome is the hit of Expo ‘67 in Montreal.

171973 The Fullers move to Philadelphia, where Bucky is World Fellow in Residence at the University City Science Center.

181975 Fuller publishes Synergetics, a major work, with E. J. Applewhite.

191980 The Fullers move to Pacific Palisades, California.

201983 R. Buckminster Fuller and his wife, Anne Hewlett Fuller, die within thirty-six hours of each other.