The term 'nano-technology' was first coined in a paper by Norio Taniguchi at the University of Tokyo, in 1974 and the term 'nanotechnology' by K. Eric Drexler in 1986.
Albert V. Crewe, the University of Chicago physicist who developed the high-resolution electron microscope that captured the first image of an individual atom picture in 1970, passed away last week. The significance of his finding is that the diameter of an atom ranges from about 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers
The term nanometer, abbreviated nm, is derived from the Greek word for midget and nano is a metric prefix and indicates a billionth part. A nanometer is about the width of six bonded carbon atoms, and approximately 40,000 are needed to equal the width of an average human hair. Looking at it another way, 1 inch = 25,400,000 nanometers.
DNA width is 2 nm and common bacteria range from 1,000 to 10,000 nm. A nanometer is the length a man's beard grows in the time it takes him to raise the razor to his face.