Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion", "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity".
Fuller in 1972
Fuller c. 1910
A 1933 Dymaxion prototype
The Montreal Biosphère by Buckminster Fuller, 1967
The Dymaxion car was designed by American inventor Buckminster Fuller during the Great Depression and featured prominently at Chicago's 1933/1934 World's Fair. Fuller built three experimental prototypes with naval architect Starling Burgess – using donated money as well as a family inheritance – to explore not an automobile per se, but the 'ground-taxiing phase' of a vehicle that might one day be designed to fly, land and drive – an "Omni-Medium Transport". Fuller associated the word Dymaxion with much of his work, a portmanteau of the words dynamic, maximum, and tension, to summarize his goal to do more with less.
Dymaxion replica
The Dymaxion car, c. 1933, artist Diego Rivera shown entering the car, carrying coat
The Dymaxion Corporation factory at the defunct Locomobile dynamometer building, Tongue Pointe, Bridgeport, Connecticut
The Dymaxion Prototype Two on display at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada (2007)