Nanotechnology: Science, Innovation, and Opportunity

Chapter 20. Infinitesimal Machinery

Richard Feynman^[1]

Introduction of Richard Feynman by Al Hibbs—Welcome to the Feynman lecture on “Infinitesimal Machinery.” I have the pleasure of introducing Richard, an old friend and past associate. He was educated at MIT and at Princeton, where he received a Ph.D. in 1942. In the War he was at Los Alamos, where he learned how to pick combination locks—an activity at which he is still quite skillful. He next went to Cornell, where he experimented with swinging hoops. Then, both before and during his time at Caltech, he became an expert in drumming, specializing in complex rhythms, particularly those of South America and recently those of the South Pacific. At Caltech, he learned to decode Mayan hieroglyphs ...