Chapter category: Nanomedicine

CHAPTER 1 The Concept of Self-Replicating Machines

This chapter appears in the following book:

Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines

Edited by: Robert A. Freitas, Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle
ISBN: 1-57059-690-5
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Chapter authors:
Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle

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For most of human history, man’s tools and machines bore no resemblance to living organisms and gave no hint of any commonality between the living and the artificial.150 In Paleolithic times,151-158 most machines manufactured by man were primitive bone or wooden sticks, crudely shaped handaxes and flint tools,157 crudely hewn boats,156 and the like. It was not until a century of centuries after the Paleolithic era ended, following the development of metallurgy,159 the birth of agriculture,160 and the founding of the first civilizations,161 that humans first manufactured complex artifacts such as ploughs and wheeled vehicles consisting of a large number of interacting parts, and ancient Chinese crossbows162 and locks.163 By classical times many artifacts were quite sophisticated, including the famous Alexandrian water clock of Ctesibus,164 Archimedes’ screw,165,166 Roman military catapults, 165,167 Hero of Alexandria’s steam engine168 and other automatons, 169 and lastly the ancient Antikythera computer170—a clocklike mechanism containing 31 intermeshed gears used as a calendrical device to calculate the positions of the sun and the moon.

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APPENDIX B Design Notes on Some Aspects of the Merkle Freitas Molecular Assembler