There’s Plenty More Room at the Bottom

Imagine building a tiny machine, so small you can barely see it with your naked eye. This machine is designed to build other, smaller machines.

The smaller machines are tiny enough to be invisible to the naked eye, but their job is to build machines that are smaller still.

You get down to the point where microscopic submarines are navigating your bloodstream, patrolling for potential predators. They can even prevent molecules from getting into the wrong place, and even tinier machines are capable of manipulating atoms themselves.

This narrative was crafted in 1959, but it wasn’t a science fiction author talking about ever tinier machines. Instead, this was physicist Richard Feynman at his best, giving a lecture entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." Here, Feynman invoked a sense of wonder to introduce the concept of nanotechnology, inviting us to imagine the possibilities ourselves.

If you know my writing, you know I often invoke Richard Feynman and his incredible sense of wo…