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 classic 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 a lot 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 '70s, 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 sorts of things? Items like self-cleaning clothing and blood vessel maintenance robots 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.
From the BioTech Project at http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu/. Written largely by David Cook. For further information see the BioTech homenode.