Generally, the starting point for the onset of N&N is credited to the American physicist

and Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman (1918e1988). In 1959, Feynman

gave a lecture entitled Theres Plenty of Room at the Bottom at the annual meeting
of the American Physical Society [7].
Why cant we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the
head of a pin?
Making use of questions like that during his presentation, Feynman suggested
that in the future we would be able to manipulate and control things at the atomic
scale and arrange the atoms the way we want, provided, of course, the laws of
nature would not be violated. For teaching purposes, it would be equivalent to
consider the atoms as parts of a game Lego and simply arrange them as we
wish. It should be noted that at no time did Feynman use the prefix nano during
his presentation. The transcription of Feynmans lecture can be found in the Appendix
A at the end of this book.