larry@VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV (01/30/88)
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Actually, Drexler credits a 1959 lecture (also published in a journal)
by Richard Feynman, Nobel prize-winner in physics, as one of the first
to look at the idea of molecular engineering with some rigor. The idea
itself has been around a good deal longer than that. For instance,
Robert Heinlein's 1945-1955 Future History series included "molar
mechanics" as an important field of science and engineering.
Larry @ jpl-vlsi