"Most children like to collect things. At four I started to collect documents of my own development as correlated with world patterns of developing technology. Beginning in 1917, I determined to employ my already rich case history, as objectively as possible, in documenting the life of a suburban New Englander, born in the Gay Nineties (1895)-- the year automobiles were introduced, the wireless telegraph and the automatic screw machine were invented, and X-rays were discovered; having his boyhood in the turn of the century; and maturing during humanity's epochal graduation from the inert, materialistic19th into the dynamic 20th century. I named my documentation the Chronofile.

"As the era of this case history loomed into greater perspective for me, as readable in the Chronofile, it became more accurately identifiable as that which, on the one hand terminated Sir Isaac Newton's normally 'at rest' world of myriadly and remotely isolated hybrid cultures, to which change was anathema; and, on the other, opened Einstein's normally 'dynamic' omni-integrating world culture to which change has come to seem evolutionarily inevitable,"

"By 1917 I was convinced that, unannounced by any authority, a much greater environmental transformation was beginning to take place in our generation's unfolding experience than had occurred, for instance, between my father's, grandfather's, great-grandfather's, and great-great grandfather's successive generations. Their writings contain glimpses of their lives in their successive undergraduate days in the classes of 1760, 1801, 1840, and 1883 at Harvard. They tell of day-long trips walking or driving from Cambridge to Boston via Watertown Bridge.

"As in 1913, in Fair Harvard's 'Age that is past/Surrendered her o'er (once more)/ To the age that' was 'waiting before,' I felt intuitively in our Freshman year that the subway, which then opened to connect Cambridge and Boston by a seven-minute ride, was a harbinger of an entirely new distance-time relationship of humanity and its transforming environment."

   —From Synergetics Dictionary citing Citizen of 21st. Century, (U, or 0, Chap. 1), 1 Apr'67

"I had a task during World War I of being secret aide to the admiral in command of the cruiser transports that carried the troops across the Atlantic and I had all the secret records of all the movements of all the ships and all the people who were on them. And when the war was over I had the task of putting those into shape for the official records for the U.S. Navy. The kind of record keeping we had to keep was chronological; I thought it was quite interesting that my experience before the Navy was that people kept kind of static kinds of files in terms of names and topics, but in the Navy important records were kept chronologically. I thought it might be interesting if I took my own private papers concerning the troubles I had had at Harvard, and everything, not just culling out the attractive aspects of my life, but really keeping the whole records-- most of which was not so attractive, and putting it all into chronological order. I did so; and I asked my mother for any papers she had regarding me and I put them all into order.

"If somebody kept a very accurate record of a human being, going through the era from the Gay'90's, from a very different kind of world through the turn of the century--as far into the twentieth century as you might live. I decided to make myself a good case history of such a human being and it meant that I could not be judge of what was valid to put in or not. I must put everything in, so I started a very rigorous record.

"There were times when I received a bill twenty times. I didn't have to put it in twenty times, just two or three--and then I would put in the letter from the lawyer concerning the case. I found that the language of lawyers about overdue bills was very interesting. I think it has changed as the years have gone on. I have kept the record faithfully, and there are now about 500 volumes....I am quite certain, looking at it, that it has made it possible for me to see myself very objectively."?

 —From Synergetics Dictionary citing Oregon Lecture #9, p.324., 12 Ju1'62

The Chronofile

The Chronofile is the central nucleus of the Fuller Archives. Primarily a collection of letters, (incoming and copies of outgoing correspondence are retained), it is the oldest and most complete section within the Archive. Whereas some other sections of the Archive detail rather specialized concerns of Fuller's career, the Chronofile is comprehensive, and touches upon nearly every area of interest and initiative of Buckminster Fuller. The Chronofile is the record of Buckminster Fuller's life and work. Within it can be found the raw history which will clarify and in some instances certify various details of Fuller's projects, thinking, personal associations, and other matters.

To more fully understand the importance of the Chronofile, the creative and unique way that Fuller has used the medium of letter writing over the years needs to be described. First of all, Fuller's attitude towards his letters is different than most people's. Letter writing is often a unique opportunity to explore some facet of his thinking in more detail; it is a touchstone for thinking. Over the years, letters have played an instrumental role in the development and documentation of Fuller's thinking. His first book, 4D TIMELOCK, which contains the seeds of a great deal of his later work and was written, illustrated, typed and published by Fuller in 1927, was originally organized as a series of letters to friends. Fuller first sorted his thoughts into different manila envelopes each labeled with the name of the friend whom he thought would be interested in that particular nuance of his thinking. After all the thoughts had been sorted according to which friend he wished to tell the particular thought to, Fuller proceeded to write the letter. These letters, with the "Dear Joe's and "Affectionately yours"? removed became the chapters of 4D TIMELOCK.

Over the years, it has been in letters that Fuller has put down his thinking about almost any particular subject he is/was interested in. Often these letters serve as the basis for his more "formal' writings - the manuscripts, which after numerous transformations become books or magazine articles. For instance, his letter to Henry Dreyfus on the nature of design became the core of Volume 2 of the WORLD DESIGN SCIENCE DECADE DOCUMENTS. Often, the work is published just as it is - such as his "Letter to Doxiadis" (Main Currents, 1969) or "Telegram to Senator Muskie" (New York Times, 1970). Fuller uses his letters for serious thinking, as he does his lectures (which he refers to as "thinking out loud"). Indeed, his letters are similar to his lectures in that they are thought "out loud." The letters are dictated to his secretary and subsequent drafts are then, like his manuscripts, reworked by hand.

As the name suggests, the Chronofile is organized chronologically. The first volume begins at 1895, and 700 volumes later, the latest correspondence and associated papers are added to the shelves. At presents a fair estimate would place the total number of papers within the Chronofile at 140,000. Fuller organized the collection chronologically because while clearly archival, the Chronofile is also a working tool that Fuller has used over the years. He would proceed in the following manner: finding that he needs, for example, to recall a person's name (or a place, date, historical fact, etc.), he can easily proceed to retrieve a particular volume from the Chronofile which he intuits may reveal the needed information. This opens up that historical period like a time machine/ window which then allows him to rapidly proceed to the correct volume and letter(s) that clarify the issue at hand. It should be noted that this method works well for Fuller personally because it is his life and experiences that are brought into focus by using the Chronofile in such a manner, but that it presents quite a time-consuming challenge to anyone else, who, by the way, usually needs to proceed by the tedious method of inspecting each letter in each volume of the Chronofile which is suspected to contain the item in question. This is one of the major reasons that the Chronofile is being cross-referenced - more on this shortly. It should be noted that miscellaneous material such as business cards, reports, doodles and so on reside beside the letters of the Chronofile . which is organized by month and year as Fuller has dispensed with the letters comprising it. For instance, if Mr. X writes Fuller in March but Fuller, due to-travel or higher priority considerations, cannot reply to X until May, then X's letter with a carbon of its reply are entered in the May Chronofile volume.

Presently underway is the mammoth project of cross-referencing the Chronofile by name of correspondents? project (if any) the letter is concerned with, and organization (if any) writing. Also recorded is whether Fuller replied, whether he did so in depth, and the subject matter.covered. In this way, Fuller's letters will be more accessible to students, scholars and staff.

Since 1973, the Fuller staff has kept an extra carbon of all outgoing correspondence. These are enclosed in separate volumes, offering direct access to Fuller's letters and outgoing staff communications, should reference be required. Also within the Chronofile are separate volumes containing the letters of individuals who were assistants to Fuller while he was at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. These sections contain letters written not necessarily to Fuller personally but to his office, and subsequently answered by those assistants then handling that type of correspondence.