In 1959, Richard Feynman gave the first talk on nanotechnology, entitled There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom[1]. He considered the possibility of direct manipulation of individual atoms as a more powerful form of synthetic chemistry. Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) (surname pronounced FINE-man; in IPA) was one of the most influential American physicists of the 20th century, expanding greatly the theory of quantum electrodynamics. ... A mite next to a gear set produced using MEMS, the precursor to nanotechnology. ...

Feynman considered a number of interesting ramifications of a general ability to manipulate matter on an atomic scale. He was particularly interested in the possibility of denser computer circuitry and microscopes that could see things much smaller than is possible with scanning electron microscopes. Researchers at IBM created today's atomic force microscopes, scanning tunneling microscopes, and other examples of probe microscopy and storage systems such as Millipede. Low temperature SEM magnification series for a snow crystal. ... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ... The atomic force microscope (AFM) is a very powerful microscope invented by Binnig, Quate and Gerber in 1986. ... Image of substitutional Cr impurities (small bumps) in the Fe(001) surface. ... Millipede is a MEMS technology for non-volatile data storage of more than a terabit per square inch ( 1 Gbit/mm²) made by IBM Zurich Laboratory in Switzerland. ...

Feynman suggested that it should be possible to manipulate atoms and molecules directly, an idea which was later realized by the use of the scanning tunneling microscope and the atomic force microscope. Feynman also suggested that it should be possible, in principle, to do chemical synthesis by mechanical manipulation, and he presented the "weird possibility" of building a tiny, swallowable surgical robot by developing a set of one-quarter-scale manipulator hands slaved to the operator's hands to build one-quarter scale machine tools analogous to those found in any machine shop. This set of small tools would then be used by the small hands to build and and operate ten sets of one-sixteenth-scale hands and tools, and so forth, culminating in a billion tiny factories. (This idea was anticipated in part, down to the microscale, by science fiction author Robert Heinlein in his 1940 short novel Waldo.) As the sizes got smaller, we would have to redesign some tools because the relative strength of various forces would change. Gravity would become less important, surface tension would become more important, Van der Waals attraction would become important, etc. Feynman mentioned these scaling issues during his talk. Nobody has yet attempted to implement this thought experiment, perhaps in part because of the enormous difficulty in seeing what the many massively parallel manipulators are doing in real time at a size scale less than the wavelength of light. Image of substitutional Cr impurities (small bumps) in the Fe(001) surface. ... The atomic force microscope (AFM) is a very powerful microscope invented by Binnig, Quate and Gerber in 1986. ... Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was one of the most influential authors in the science fiction genre. ... Waldo (1940) is a novella by Robert A. Heinlein originally published in Astounding Magazine. ... It has been suggested that Law of universal gravitation be merged into this article or section. ... In chemistry, the term Van der Waals force originally referred to all forms of intermolecular forces; however, in modern usage it tends to refer to intermolecular forces that deal with forces due to the polarization of molecules. ... A massively parallel is a distributed memory computer system which consists of many individual nodes, each of which is essentially an independent computer in itself, and in turn consists of at least one processor, its own memory, and a link to the network that connects all the nodes together. ...

He concluded his talk with challenges to build a tiny motor and to write the information from a book page on a surface 1/25,000 smaller in linear scale. He offered prizes of $1000 for each challenge. Amazingly, his motor challenge was quickly met by a meticulous craftsman using conventional tools; the motor met the conditions, but did not advance the art. In 1985, Tom Newman, a Stanford grad student, successfully reduced the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities by 1/25,000, and collected the second Feynman prize.

Feynman's talk served as a basis for later molecular nanotechnology concepts of K. Eric Drexler, who envisioned achieving massively parallel nanoscale operation via nanoscale self-replication under computer control in Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. Unlike Feynman, Drexler presented no straightforward potential pathway for building the first of his nanoscale machines. Kim Eric Drexler (born April 25, 1955) is best known for popularizing the potential of hypothetical molecular nanotechnology. ... Engines of Creation (ISBN 0-385-19973-2) is a seminal molecular nanotechnology book written by K. Eric Drexler in 1986. ...

Feynman the Teacher

There was also a version of this talk that he gave, with the same name, to high school students. One place that it was given was at Los Angeles High School, in about 1960, to a group of fifty selected high school physics students. The talk was well understood and greatly appreciated by the students, who were much more impressed than by Linus Pauling or Edward Teller. Linus Carl Pauling (February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994) was an American physical chemist, widely regarded as the premier chemist of the twentieth century. ... Edward Teller in 1958 as Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. ...

External links

• Feynman's classic 1959 talk:There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom