thesis
Plenty of room, plenty of history
A 1959 lecture by Richard Feynman has become an important document in the history of
nanotechnology but, as chris toumey reports, there are disagreements about when it became
important, and why.
Fifty years ago this month, the best known
paper in the history of nanotechnology began
as a talk to the American Physical Society
at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. On the evening of 29 December
1959, under the title ‘There’s plenty of room
at the bottom’ Richard Feynman described
the exciting possibilities that would open
up if scientists could learn how to control
single atoms and molecules, and improve the
performance of instruments such as electron
microscopes. The tone of this talk was to
challenge the physicists at the meeting: first, to
get them to see that these things were possible
and, second, to make them happen.
Feynman did not use the term
‘nanotechnology’, and neither did anyone
else at the time. Nevertheless, it is fair to say
that this lecture was a vision of what we now
call nanotechnology, and parts of Feynman’s
vision have indeed been realized. Engineering
and Science, the Caltech magazine, printed the
talk in February 1960 (ref. 1). Shorter versions
appeared in Saturday Review 2 and Popular
Science3, and the paper was also published in
California Institute of Technology Quarterly 4, a
volume of essays entitled Miniaturization5 and
in the Technion Yearbook for 1962 (ref. 6). The
fact that Feynman’s lecture was published six
times in just three years is a remarkable tribute
to Feynman’s brilliance and eloquence7.
In the first 20 years after
Feynman’s lecture was
published in 1960, it was cited
a mere seven times in the
scientific literature.
More than 20 years later, on 23 February
1983, Feynman spoke again on the same topic,
under the title ‘Infinitesimal machinery’8, at
the Jet Propulsion Lab, also in Pasadena. In
this talk, which Feynman described as ‘There’s
plenty of room at the bottom, revisited’, he
reaffirmed the general spirit of his 1959 talk
and re-iterated certain parts almost verbatim.
He also presented an abbreviated version of
the same ideas on 25 October 1984 at the
Esalen Institute in Big Sur, also in California9.
In 1991, three years after Feynman
died from abdominal cancer, ‘Plenty of
nature nanotechnology | VOL 4 | DECEMBER 2009 | www.nature.com/naturenanotechnology
room’ began to reappear in books and
Emilio SEgrE ViSual archiVES, W. F. mEggErS gallEry oF NobEl laurEatES
journals. Science ran a short excerpt in a
special issue on nanotechnology 10, and the
complete version was published in Journal
of Microelectromechanical Systems11, the
proceedings of the first Foresight conference12,
two collections of Feynman’s papers13,14 and
on various web sites. ‘Infinitesimal machinery’
was published for the first time in 1993
(ref. 15) and has also been reprinted16.
In the full-length versions of ‘Plenty
of room’, the text has an introduction, ten
topical subheadings and a conclusion. “What
I want to talk about,” says Feynman in the
introduction, “is the problem of manipulating
and controlling things on a small scale.”
He then describes in detail how to use an
electron microscope to write letters that
are 25,000 times smaller than normal (with
the aim of writing the entire content of
Encyclopaedia Britannica on the head of a
pin). One would then, he continues, make The significance of what Richard Feynman said
plastic moulds of the writing, reproduce them in his 1959 lecture, ‘There’s plenty of room at the
in silicon and, finally, read the copies of the bottom’, only became clear decades later.
writing with an electron microscope.
After that, his text shifts into a different
tone: “I will not now discuss how we are smaller slave sets. Those slave sets would
going to do it, but only what is possible in then become second-generation masters that
principle — in other words, what is possible would build and control even smaller slave
in principle according to the laws of physics”. sets, and so on until a series of these master-
His possibilities-in-principle include slave devices could manipulate extremely
reducing words to a binary code written in small matter in very large quantities. “It is
atoms, improving “the electron microscope rather a difficult programme,” said Feynman,
by a hundred times”, making computer “but it is a possibility.”
components with diameters of 10 to 100 ‘Plenty of room’ combines predictions of
atoms, modelling information systems on what will happen (for example, “we could
biological systems, manufacturing extremely arrange atoms one by one the way we want
small devices (“infinitesimal machines”) and them”), with a wish list of things that ought to
manipulating individual atoms. Five times happen (“Is there no way to make the electron
he tells his audience that he does not know microscope more powerful?”). There are also
how to do a procedure, but that the procedure caveats about, for example, the problem of
violates no laws of physics, and thus he dissipating heat at very small scales. Feynman
challenges scientists to figure out how to do it. presents a clear blueprint for tackling some of
One memorable passage concerns a series these problems: for others he says that he does
of devices for manipulating very small things. not exactly know how to do something, but
Feynman notes that workers who handle that it is not impossible in principle.
radioactive material use a mechanical set of In the first 20 years after Feynman’s
master–slave hands. The worker operates the lecture was published in 1960, it was cited a
master set, which controls the slave set, which mere seven times in the scientific literature.
then handles the radioactive substance at a This scant record does not square with
safe distance. Often the slave set is smaller the common belief that Feynman’s paper
than the master set. Feynman proposed that represents the origin of nanotechnology. In
a master set could build and control multiple the years leading up to the invention of the
783
© 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
thesis
scanning tunnelling microscope, the atomic
force microscope and the other breakthroughs
that laid the foundations of nanotechnology
as we now know it, six of the articles that cited
‘Plenty of room’ referred only to his comments
on improving electron microscopes or to his
predictions for making computers smaller.
The only article in that 20-year span
that treated Feynman’s paper as a vision of
nanotechnology was published by James
Krumhansl and Yoh-Han Pao (both working
for the National Science Foundation while
on leave from Cornell University and Case
Western Reserve University) in Physics Today
in 1979 (ref. 17). In the introduction to a
special issue on ‘microscience’, Krumhansl
and Pao wrote: “In the past 20 years, there has
been an explosive growth in ‘microscience’, in
exploring that room at the bottom Feynman
mentioned.” As they took the reader through
their article, they pointed to passages
from ‘Plenty of room’ that had anticipated
developments in microscience. Here, finally,
Feynman’s paper was being respected as an
influential text.
‘Plenty of room’ combines
predictions of what will
happen, with a wish list of
things that ought to happen.
Furthermore, Feynman’s paper directly
inspired one notable experiment. Feynman
had challenged scientists to “take the
information on the page of a book and
put it on an area 1/25,000 smaller in linear
scale in such manner that it can be read by
an electron microscope”. Twenty-five years
later, Thomas Newman and Fabian Pease
did so in their lab at Stanford University,
using an electron beam to write the first
page of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities
on a silicon nitride surface18. They wrote to
Feynman on 11 November 1985 to inform
him of their accomplishment and collect
the prize of $1,000. In his reply, Feynman
wrote: “You have certainly satisfied my idea
of what I wanted to give the prize for … Can
application to computers be far behind?”19
Feynman’s 1959 vision was especially
appreciated by Eric Drexler and his associates.
The first sentence of Drexler’s first paper 20
on nanotechnology referred to ‘Plenty of
room’, and in a position paper from 2004,
Drexler defines nanotechnology narrowly in
terms of Feynman’s lecture, thereby taking a
stance as true protector of Feynman’s legacy
in nanotechnology 21.
Annual references to ‘Plenty of room’
in scientific journals reached double digits
in 1992, and have remained consistently in
double digits since 1996 (refs 22,23). A person
784
in the Caltech community has told me that
Feynman’s lecture was much more influential
in scientific circles than my citation numbers
indicate, but that this influence took the
form of discussions, rather than references
in published articles. I agree that Feynman’s
paper must have had an influence, especially
at Caltech, that cannot be measured in the
citations I report. But how does one trace that
kind of influence unless the people who were
influenced have left some kind of trace? I feel
that the argument of my Caltech source is
credible, but practically impossible to verify.
Instead of asking how ‘Plenty of
room’ supposedly caused the origin of
nanotechnology, it might be more fruitful to
ask why it was not until 1992 that Feynman’s
paper started to receive significant attention.
In my view, the answer points to a series of
events between 1981 and 1991. The scanning
tunnelling microscope and the atomic
force microscope became well known, well
developed and well used by 1991. Drexler
had popularized the term ‘nanotechnology’
in 1986 in the subtitle of his book Engines
of Creation, and when the journal
Nanotechnology was founded in 1989, it
made that term better known in the scientific
community. On 5 April 1990 Don Eigler and
Erhard Schweizer published a paper in Nature
reporting that they had spelt out IBM with 35
xenon atoms on a nickel surface, and on 29
November 1991 Science published a special
issue on nanotechnology. In other words, a
distinctive scientific field with a unique name
had coalesced between 1981 and 1991. At that
point it needed an authoritative account of
its origin. Pointing back to Feynman’s lecture
would give nanotechnology an early date of
birth and it would connect nanotechnology to
the genius, the personality and the eloquence
of Richard P. Feynman.
But how selective is the process of
attributing credibility to nanotechnology by
retroactively claiming a connection to the
Feynman legacy? ‘Plenty of room’ describes
multiple possibilities, including the nano-
etching of texts; the storing and retrieving
of data in an atom-size code; the need to
improve electron microscopes; the wonders
of biological information systems; the
miniaturization of computers; the difficulties
of miniaturization; a mechanical surgeon that
could be swallowed; and a system of “a billion
tiny factories” working together, to list only
some of the ideas in that paper.
Let us say that nanotechnology is the
fruit of the thoughts that Richard Feynman
expressed in December 1959. Certainly
one can point to prophesies-come-true in
‘Plenty of room’, but what is the value of the
other passages? There are not a lot of these,
but there are some that went nowhere24. Is
nanotechnology incomplete or invalid until all
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© 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
of Feynman’s vision is realized? The problem
is that there is plenty of room in ‘Plenty of
room’ to read the text selectively, especially the
passages in which Feynman tells the reader
that an idea is “not impossible”.
I recommend reading Feynman’s lecture
if you have not yet done so, and re-reading
it if you have not read it recently. What a
delight it would be if more scientific writing
were as eloquent and charming as this paper.
As you read it, you will appreciate it as a
vision of the scientific field that today we call
‘nanotechnology’. But is it truly a blueprint for
nanotechnology, such that it represents the
origin of nanotechnology? If this paper is the
authentic origin of nanotechnology because
Feynman specified the scientific details of it
in 1959, and if nanotechnology brings to life
some of Feynman’s ideas but not others, then
where did the rest of nanotechnology go?
Your reading of ‘Plenty of room’ will
show you that, if we treat this paper as the
1959 blueprint of nanotechnology, then
nanotechnology has failed Richard Feynman.
I suggest a different way to appreciate it,
namely, by seeing that this fine paper by a fine
man was more important to nanotechnology
in 1992 than it was in 1959. ❐
Chris Toumey is at the University of South
Carolina NanoCenter.
e‑mail: Toumey@mailbox.sc.edu
References
1. Feynman, R. P. Engineering and Science 22–36 (February 1960).
2. Feynman, R. P. Saturday Review 45–47 (2 April 1960)
3. Feynman, R. P. Popular Science 114–116; 230–232 (November 1960).
4. Feynman, R. P. California Institute of Technology Quarterly
2, 2–10 (Fall 1960).
5. Feynman, R. P. in Miniaturization (ed. Gilbert, H.)
282–296 (Reinhold, 1961).
6. Feynman, R. P. Technion Yearbook 19, 29–33; 137–141 (1962).
7. Bassett, D. in Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Society (ed. Guston,
D.) (Sage Publications, in the press).
8. Feynman, R. P. Infinitesimal Machinery (Videotape of 23 February
1983, Caltech Archives).
9. Feynman, R. P. Tiny Machines (Videotape of 25 October 1984,
Sound Photosynthesis, Mill Valley, California).
10. Feynman, R. P. Science 254, 1300–1301 (1991).
11. Feynman, R. P. J. Microelectromech. S. 1, 60–66 (1992).
12. Feynman, R.P in Nanotechnology: Research and Perspectives (ed.
Crandall, B.) 347–363 (MIT Press, 1992).
13. Feynman, R. P. in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
(ed. Robbins, J.) 117–139 (Perseus, 1999).
14. Feynman, R. P. in Feynman and Computation (ed. Hey, A.)
63–76 (Perseus, 1999).
15. Feynman, R. P. J. Microelectromech. S. 2, 4–14 (1993).
16. Feynman, R. P. in Nanotechnology: Science, Innovation, and
Opportunity (ed. Foster, L.) 247–268 (Prentice Hall, 2006).
17. Krumhansl, J. & Pao, Y. Physics Today 32, 25–32 (November 1979).
18. Newman, T., Williams, K. E. & Pease, R. F. W. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B
5, 88–91 (1987).
19. Feynman, R. P. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the
Beaten Path (Perseus, 2005).
20. Drexler, K. E. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 78, 5275–5278 (1981).
21. Drexler, K. E. Bull. Sci. Technol. Soc. 24, 21–27 (February 2004).
22. Toumey, C Engineering and Science 16–23 (June 2005).
23. Toumey, C. Techné 12, 133–168 (Fall 2008).
24. Junk, A. & Riess, F. Amer. J. Phys. 74, 825–830 (2006).