nanomachine n.

a nanotechnological machine

  • 1986 K. E. Drexler Engines of Creation i. 5

    The engineers of the new technology will build both nanocircuits and nanomachines.

  • 1990 G. Bear Queen of Angels (1991) i.iv. 20 Greg Bear

    The resulting flow of electricity through the superconducting material of the wings…was used by AXIS to dismantle the antimatter drive, reduce it to a fine powder with the aid of nanomachine destructors.

  • 1993 D. Beason & K. J. Anderson Assemblers of Infinity 37 39, Kevin J. Anderson Doug Beason bibliography

    I think you'll find these are the most promising nanomachines yet.

  • 1993 P. Anderson Harvest of Stars (1994) 424 Poul Anderson bibliography

    At the fringes, robots trundled with their loads from a dome wherein humus was being synthesized, to work it into the rock that nanomachines had reduced to mineral grains.

  • 1994 Analog Science Fiction & Fact Jan. 83/1

    I’ve heard you work on molecular modifiers. Nanomachines.

  • 1994 Analog Science Fiction & Fact Jan. 94/1

    Tailor a nanomachine that can repair Dee-dee’s cells.

  • 1994 I. McDonald Necroville (1995) 254 Ian McDonald

    It’s the original nanomachine, microprocessors the size of molecules.

  • 1994 S. M. Baxter Ring (1996) xxx. 388, Stephen Baxter bibliography

    I think they downloaded equipment into there: nanomachines, ‘bots of some kind—maybe even some analogue of humans.

  • 1996 Interzone Apr. 39/1

    When programs became streams of nanomachines, the nanomachines streams of quasi-particles and photons.

  • 1996 Interzone Sept. 18/1

    You will be expected to install and supervise various terraforming nanomachines.

  • 2013 S. Greenfield 2121 177 page image Susan Greenfield bibliography

    It must have been the sophisticated automation itself—it could hardly be the infantile Others—that had developed nano-machines that could control themselves, independent of the human macro-world.


Research requirements

antedating 1986

Earliest cite

K. E. Drexler 'Engines of Creation'

Research History
Ben Ostrowsky submitted a 2013 cite from Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield.
Added to the OED in June 2003, with an earliest cite from 1986.

Last modified 2021-03-09 02:29:26
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.