Nanotechnology

History Of Nanotechnology Goes Back 2000 Years

On paper, the concepts that lie behind nanotechnology were aired in public less than fifty years ago. However theory has it that the principles behind nanotechnology were known to man more than 2,000 years ago. Emanating from the field of applied science and technology, nanotechnology is covered by a main unifying theme of controlling matter on a scale smaller than one micrometer. The subject of nanotechnology was known to have been discussed by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

However in modern times, the World famous physicist and Nobel laureate Prof. Richard Feynman was the first to deliver a speech on the possibilities that this form of technology would bring to mankind in the 21st century. He raised the subject to members of the highly acclaimed American Physical Society at their annual general meeting in late December 1959. To an audience made of the cream of the most eminent scientists of that era.

Although most of them were already aware of the principals that lay behind this mind boggling technology, many of them considered that Feynman's speech was delivered slightly tongue in cheek, and his famous expression " there is plenty of room at the bottom, was actually a manifestation of the Professor's dreams of a Nanotechnology driven society, some time in the future.

Even the word "Nanotechnology" was unknown to the audience and to Professor Feynman himself. Even today in 2007, when we look upon the miniaturization of technology, and the advances of the last ten to twenty years, the subject is hard to encompass. Computers that once filled entire rooms can now be fitted into the top shirt pocket. And this is just the beginning!

What Professor Feynman was saying way back then was that electrons, ions and even atoms could be utilized to create complicated circuitry in an increasingly diminished space? If Professor Feynman had not originally been recognized as a gifted physicist there may well have been those who would have denounced him as heretic, as he continued to expound his theories on miniaturization and even beyond.

Professor Feynman pronounced in the early sixties, that the day was not so far away that man would be capable of transcribing the entire contents of Encyclopedia Britannica on a pin head. And that meant all 24 volumes. This was the Professor's way of introducing the concepts and possibilities of nanotechnology to the public.

It is fair to say that although Professor Feynman's speech fired the imagination of many scientific researchers, the principal of technology still remained at a theoretical level for another quarter of a century.

It was only in the mid-1980s that the business and scientific communities were made more aware of the possibilities of this exciting technology. This was due to the publishing of the research of K. Eric Drexler in his book "Engines of Creation" Mr. Drexler's book not only described the extensive potential that this old/new technology could offer to mankind, it also gave it its name " Nanotechnology." It seemed that with the launch of this book, the Nanotechnology revolution began to gain its real impetus.

Just a few years later some of its principles were being employed across a number of fields, including commerce, science and medicine. The leaps and bounds in computer technology of the last decade are largely due to Nanotechnology. The mind numbs in awe when we take into account that the first principal developments are not expected to be commercially or scientifically active for at least another decade. Everyone living on our already troubled planet will be affected, and nanotechnology is expected to make major changes in medicine, cure water shortages, effectively stamp out all forms of conventional war fare and make our planet a better and safer place to live in.