Let's see what would be involved. The head of a pin is a sixteenth of an inch across. If you magnify it by 25,000 diameters, the area of the head of the pin is then equal to the area of all the pages of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Therefore, all it is necessary to do is to reduce in size all the writing in the Encyclopaedia by 25,000 times. Is that possible? The resolving power of the eye is about 1/120 of an inch---that is roughly the diameter of one of the little dots on the fine half-tone reproductions in the Encyclopaedia. This, when you demagnify it by 25,000 times, is still 80 angstroms in diameter---32 atoms across, in an ordinary metal. In other words, one of those dots still would contain in its area 1,000 atoms. So, each dot can easily be adjusted in size as required by the photoengraving, and there is no question that there is enough room on the head of a pin to put all of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.�
-Speech by Richard P. Feynman, 1959, at the annual meeting of the America Physical Society. See the entire speech here.
Think of an area of science. Got one? Now think how that science would change if it were reduced to an inconceivably small scale. Did you think of biology? Nanotechnology can effect biology in many ways. Conceptural ideas of nanobots have been brought forth. The nanobots, which are just ideas, could kill a cold virus or stop blood from flowing freely in an open cut. Nanotechnology applications are limitless.
Feynman proposed the idea to reduce Encyclopaedia Brittanica to the size of a pin head. In 1997 a method was developed to do just that. This is called Nanolithography. It literally means writing at the nanoscale. One method to write is called Dip Pen Lithography (DPN), developed by Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University. Other methods, some of which are still in the concpetual phase, include Nanosphere Liftoff Lithography (NSL) and E-Beam Lithography. In the following web pages, DPN and NSL will be discussed, along with Molecular Sythesis, an important component to nanotechnology.