Science history: Richard Feynman gives a fun little lecture — and dreams up an entirely new field of physics — Dec. 29, 1959
In a short talk at Caltech, physicist Richard Feynman laid out a vision of manipulating and controlling atoms at the tiniest scale. It would precede the field of nanotechnology by decades.
Richard Feynman dreamed up the notion of nanotechnology in 1959, but the word wouldn't be coined until 1974. Historians debate how much his vision drove innovations in the field. (Image credit: Science Photo Library)
Milestone: Vision of nanotechnology laid out
Date: Dec. 29, 1959
Where: Pasadena, California
Who: Richard Feynman
On a December day, Richard Feynman gave a fun little lecture at Caltech — and dreamed up an entirely new field of physics.
How small? Feynman went on to discount advances of the time, such as writing the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin, as trivial.
"But that's nothing; that's the most primitive, halting step in the direction I intend to discuss. It is a staggeringly small world that is below," Feynman said in his lecture. Rather, he suggested, people could write the entire 24-volume encyclopedia on the head of a pin, and elegantly showed that there's enough space there to write it legibly and read it out.
He then explored the possibility of a number of then-futuristic ideas: electron microscopes capable of manipulating individual atoms, ultracompact data storage, miniaturized computers, and powerful, ingestible biological machines that travel into organs like the heart, find defects, and repair them with tiny knives. He proposed a number of ways to create these small-scale innovations, including manipulating light and ions.
He ended the lecture by offering a reward of $1,000 to anyone who could miniaturize the text in a book 25,000-fold, such that it could be read using an electron microscope. He offered another $1,000 to anyone who could make a motor no bigger than 1/64th of an inch cubed.
Richard Feynman dreamed up the notion of nanotechnology in 1959, but the word wouldn't be coined until 1974. Historians debate how much his vision drove innovations in the field. (Image credit: Photo 12 / Contributor/ Getty Images)
The latter of these prizes was scooped up the following year by engineer William McLellan, who created a 250-microgram motor composed of 13 parts. In his award letter, Feynman congratulated McLellan on the feat but joked that he shouldn't "start writing small," lest he solve the first challenge, too and expect to receive the other $1,000 prize.