“CALL ME TRIMTAB”

Inscription on his headstone. On a ship the trimtab is a small but crucial part of a the rudder mechanism, which controls the direction of the vessel; on an aircraft it is a small adjustable tab on the trailing edge of the elevator control surface set by the pilot to trim the aircraft in a steady and level orientation. This use for his epitaph comes from statements he had made in life, including an interview with Barry Farrell in Playboy (February 1972): Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there&#x27;s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trimtab. It&#x27;s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trimtab. Society thinks it&#x27;s going right by you, that it&#x27;s left you altogether. But if you&#x27;re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trimtab. He is also quoted at the Buckminster Fuller Institute http://challenge.bfi.org/faq/ as having said: When I thought about steering the course of the &quot;Spaceship Earth&quot; and all of humanity, I saw most people trying to turn the boat by pushing the bow around. I saw that by being all the way at the tail of the ship, by just kicking my foot to one side or the other, I could create the &quot;low pressure&quot; which would turn the whole ship. If ever someone wanted to write my epitaph, I would want it to say &quot;Call me Trimtab&quot;. <br><br>From 1980s onwards<br> <br class="br">Source: Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Buckminster Fuller / Quotes / From 1980s onwards