The conventional narrative for a nanotechnology origin story starts with US physicist Richard Feynman and his famous 1959 lecture to the American Physical Society in 1959, titled 'There's lots of room at the bottom'. [Can you briefly describe what this title, or his lecture, refers to? What is the bottom?] Next, a Japanese engineer named Norio Taniguchi in his paper for the Japan Society for Precision Engineering in 1974 coined the phrase nanotechnology. Very quickly, the new science idea becomes a technology. This is further emphasized by f K. [What are lower case letters for?] Eric Drexler a US engineer who wrote thepopular [need a space betw these words] science book, Engines of Creation shouldn't title be in Italics?, lauding the coming nanotechnology age. (The book has haunted Drexler since its publication in 1986.) (xxx grey goo)
The basics are not disputed however, it has been pointed out that science fiction writers got there first.
Contrast this passage from the widely believed ur what does ur stand for? text for nanotechnology 'There’s lots of room at the bottom',
A hundred tiny hands
When I make my first set of slave ``hands'' at one-fourth scale, I am going to make ten sets. I make ten sets of ``hands,'' and I wire them to my original levers so they each do exactly the same thing at the same time in parallel. Now, when I am making my new devices one-quarter again as small, I let each one manufacture ten copies, so that I would have a hundred ``hands'' at the 1/16th size.
with this description of Robert Heinlein's 1942 short story,
In Waldo, Heinlein (1942/1965) described a process of molecular manipulation, in which smaller and smaller devices are created by Waldo to enable him to "directly manipulate microscopic materials by means of his own human hands."
Interesting comparison!
Nobody can prove that Feyman ever read 'Waldo' or any of the other science fiction stories such as Theodore Sturgeon's 'Microcosmic God' (1941), Eric Frank Fussell's 'Hobbyist' (1947), James Blish's 'Surface Tension' (1952), or Philip K. Dick's 'Autofac' (1953), which seem to presage nanotechnology. But, Feyman's friend, Alfbert R. Hibbs, a senior staff scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is reputed to have read 'Waldo' and discussed with him the period before the legendary, 'There's lots of room at the bottom' talk.
Jump points
Ancient World These don't hyperlink to anything
Middle Ages
Jump joints shouldn't this be points?
Storytellers create nano
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