Re: Nanotechnology Progress

Chris Hind (chind@juno.com)
Mon, 11 Nov 1996 13:06:57 -0800


>In the November 1 1996 issue of Science is an article about The Scanning
>Probe Microscope. These machines can not only see individual atoms they can
>manipulate them too. The trouble is, a one tip microscope, the only kind
made
>up to now, is much too slow to build anything of practical value.
Researchers
>reasoned that they could speed things up if they had lots of tips running in
>parallel. Calvin Quate of Stanford University has just made a 16 tip
>microscope and has greatly impressed people with the high quality images it
>produces. Others are working on a 144 tip microscope that should be finished
>soon.
>
>What really struck me is something Quate said at the end of the article, he
>predicted that by this time next year "we'll be writing 1-cm by 1-mm areas
>and we'll be doing it very fast". On the atomic scale 1-cm by 1-mm is a
HUGE
>piece of real-estate! Singularity speculation anyone?
>
>
> John K Clark johnkc@well.com

John, would you please give me permission to post this post on the current
HotWired Brain Tennis thread about nano? That thread REALLY needs to start
discussing the potential of nano and how it could be done rather than the
philosophy of nano.