Word: one
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ultimate fantasy of the miniaturists is tiny robot "assemblers" that could operate at the atomic level, building finished goods one molecule at a time. This is the far-reaching goal of an embryonic discipline called nanotechnology, so named because it would require manipulating objects , measured in billionths of a meter (nanometers). In Engines of Creation, the nanotechnologist's bible, K. Eric Drexler envisions a world in which everything from locomotives to cheeseburgers is assembled from molecular raw materials, much as proteins are created from their amino-acid building blocks by the machinery of a living cell...
...house. "Why in hell didn't we know about it?" he blurted, not expecting an answer. "What can we do?" he asked, turning to Clifton. "What can the military do?" Clifton told him that out of some 40 contingency plans for Berlin, he could not recall a single one dealing with a wall being built between the Soviet and Allied sectors. In fact, there was not much he could...
Later, in the Oval Office, he sighed that the Wall would stay until the Soviets tired of it. "We could have sent tanks over and knocked the Wall down," he mused. "What then? They build another one back a hundred yards? We knock that down, then...
When Kennedy did see the Wall, the event became one of the great spectacles of the cold war, his speech one of the most memorable in his presidency. When Kennedy flew into Berlin that June morning, he had a text that did not please him. "You think this is any good?" he asked the U.S. Berlin commander, Major General James Polk, who had joined the Kennedy caravan.Polk scanned the speech and replied bluntly, "I think it is terrible." Kennedy agreed and began to write a new one. But before he taunted the builders of the Wall, he rode four hours...
With breathtaking speed, the hideous partition that split Berlin falls to the pickax of reforms inspired by Mikhail Gorbachev. As the city exults and the world ponders the consequences, one thing is certain: nothing will ever be quite the same again. -- Is one Germany better than two? -- An obituary for the Wall of Shame, where some 75 people yearning for freedom have perished...