Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Who Invented Nanotechnology

Origin of Nanotechnology
There are a lot of conflicting theories about the origin of nanotechnology and who exactly was responsible for inventing it. Obviously, like any other area of science there was that person who came along the concept in his research or practices and introduced it to the world then there were consequent developments by many other contributors. But when scrutinizing and detailing the facts about nanotechnology it becomes clear that actually there was specifically no one who was

When analyzing the facts about nanotechnology, it will become apparent that not one person was accountable for this revolutionary invention. The only sure thing about its origin is that there was a mention of the concept by physicist Richard Feynman in December 1959 in his talk at an American Physical Society gathering.

In his talk, Feynman explained the possibility of the creation of a process to control individual nanoparticles by employing one set of apparatus to control another relatively sizeable set. His explanations would later contribute immensely to the actual definition that Professor Norio Taniguchi from the by Tokyo Science University would give one and a half decades later in 1974.

The whole nanotechonology concept was later taken up by Dr. K. Eric Drexler who through many speeches and lectures popularized the concept. He explored the controversial definition using the guidelines of his predecessors and published a book with his work in 1986 by the title Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology.

It is through his research and works that the word nanotechnology acquired its current meaning and definition.

The first book by Dr. Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology is believed to be the first book that covered and explored the topic of nanotechnology well and so he is largely associated with the invention and origin of the concept.

The invention of nanotechnology brought along two very important developments which are used widely even today. These are the coming of age of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and nanotubes and the emergence of the cluster science concept.

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