R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER, FUTURIST INVENTOR, DIES AT 87 (original) (raw)
Advertisement
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
- July 3, 1983
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
July 3, 1983
,
Section 1, Page
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
R. Buckminster Fuller, the forward-looking inventor best known as the father of the geodesic dome, died of a heart attack Friday in Los Angeles at the Good Samaritan Hospital while visiting his wife, who is critically ill. He was 87 years old, and lived in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
As he put it himself, with his customary cheerful immodesty, Mr. Fuller was an ''an engineer, inventor, mathematician, architect, cartographer, philosopher, poet, cosmogonist, comprehensive designer and choreographer.''
He was also a thoroughgoing original, who for many years was dismissed by many as something of a crackpot. But by the 1950's, having stubbornly refused to abandon his beliefs that through technology ''man can do anything he needs to do'' and that ''man can create miracles,'' he had attracted a cultlike following.
Well into his 70's, Mr. Fuller yearly flew tens of thousands of miles, giving college lectures, some of which extended to a nonstop five or six hours. He was enormously popular among young people, whom he counseled to ''reform the environment instead of trying to reform man.''
''The young world,'' as he called modern youth, listened raptly as the somewhat disheveled, stockily built Mr. Fuller, his arms waving excitedly, his eyes flashing behind thick glasses, told of his dreams of a better tomorrow. Called Naive by Detractors
And he gave this advice to the young: ''Bite your tongue. Get a cinder in your eye. When you feel good, you feel nothing.'' He ignored detractors who called him a megalomaniac, ''an inspired child'' and a naive romanticist, garrulously proclaiming his vision that man, through technology and planning, could become superman.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement