Up until 1959 most scientists and engineers working at or below the nanometer scale were primarily concerned with the theory of breaking very small things (or at least whacking them as hard as possible)... with admittedly spectacular results. Physicists ripped apart, smashed, and bombarded the atom until they were fairly sure that they could be predictably uncertain of its workings; however, in 1959 Richard Feynman suggested that some of the same techniques made available through modern physics might be used to design and build novel types of machinery from the atom up. This reversal of the classical strategy of fabrication, which tends to whittle down large objects until they roughly approximate the desired product, is the fundamental concept upon which nanotechnology is based.
After Feynman's address, there was a brief period of excitement involving alot of dreamy talk and a reprint in Engineering and Science, and then everyone went quietly back to finding out who could throw a subatomic particle the hardest. Most scientists considered the prospect of directing the manipulation of material at the molecular level improbable and impractical at best, but with the advent of recombinant DNA technology in the '70's, and the ever increasing need for miniaturization of computer components and astronautical hardware, it became apparent to some that nanotechnology was not only possible, but essential to the continued advancement of science in the coming century.
Nanotechnology
strives to use biological, physical, chemical, and computational
techniques already in existence to build things with atomic precision. What
things? Self cleaning clothing, blood vessel maintenance robots, and
food are some of the long term goals of nanotechnology's most ambitious advocates.
Conservative researchers and groups are concentrating on much more
modest goals, such as developing computational
devices which exceed today's cycle rates by as much as ten orders
of magnitude, simulating hypothetical molecular
components, using DNA
computing to solve brain teasers, and writing their names with
individual xenon atoms.
NASA , NAS computational nanotechnology
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