Atom Level Manipulation;

One of the most revolutionary technologies being explored during the 1990s was nanotechnology, which involved the manipulation of matter at the atomic level. Although it was still in the developmental stages by the end of the decade, important advances had been made toward mastering this extreme miniaturization of technology. Scientists speculated that nanotechnology would eventually have profound effects on information technology, medicine, national security, energy, and the environment, sparking the production of supercomputers that fit into the palm of a hand, or tiny devices to fight disease and repair injury from inside the human body. Nanotechnology dealt with matter in its most elemental forms: atoms and molecules. The basic measuring unit in nanotechnology, the nanometer, was the width of three atoms. Ten nanometers was one thou-sand times smaller than the diameter of a strand of human hair. Nanotechnology, scientists predicted, would make...