Letter from Kiyoshi Kuromiya, Oct 9, 1994, Fuller’s adjuvant on Critical Path, Editor of the posthumous Cosmography, to Mitch C. Amiano, participant on Geodesic list (used with permission)
Dear Mitch:
I was at EPCOT in Orlando, Florida, earlier today. I was attending/meetings nearby. The Geosphere ride called “Spaceship Earth” was closed. The sign read: “Spaceship Earth is being refurbished for your future enjoyment.” Besides lifting nearly intact Bucky Fuller’s themes for this “theme” park, they feature his inventions and ideas freely around the park and even in new projects like “Innoventions” without properly crediting Bucky.
At a book signing in 1982 in Beverly Hills, Bucky met Ray Bradbury for the first time. Ray Bradbury rather sheepishly admitted that he wrote the script for the Spaceship Earth ride.
Bucky Fuller was not invited to attend the Grand Opening of EPCOT, although it was known to the company that Bucky was working in nearby Deland, FL during that period of time.
Adding even more insult to injury, Bucky had been hired by Disney’s creative department to lecture Disney artists and designers in Burbank for three days in 1977 or 78.
Although Bucky was granted nearly 30 patents during his lifetime, he almost voluntarily cooperated with efforts to implement his ideas. Disney however took the ball and ran with it. Bucky was not one to resort to litigation (see Legally Piggily, in Critical Path), which does not mean his feelings were not hurt in such instances of ripoffs of creative properties.
As I once proposed in 1981, if Disney conceded sales of Dymaxion Maps at EPCOT, all of Bucky’s work present and future could have been funded.
–Kiyoshi Kuromiya