Re: Nanotechnology Progress

Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Mon, 11 Nov 1996 23:18:36 -0500


Chris Hind wrote:
>
> >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.

Also include the announcement that they built an abacus with atoms, and
did calculations with it.

Mike