ISBN 0-471-57518-6 (US pbk)

"Unlike his previous two books, this one was squarely aimed at the scientific community. Dense with technical detail, it outlines every step in the creation of nanotechnology. Ending with the now legendary 'black box' ['a system capable of manufacturing macroscopic objects'] that would produce every conceivable item at 'next to nothing' in cost." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1995).

"This is a box about the size of a microwave oven, with four rubber feet and a fan to keep it cool, that plugs into the wall, that would have a tank on the top into which you would put feedstock solution, a special mix of chemical compounds like acetone -- the material in nail polish remover -- as a carbon source, and some other things dissolved in it to supply other elements. You'd be able to pick some object from a catalog and say I want one of these, and have it work for an hour or so. And then it would give you about a kilogram of product.

"It's an appliance which if you turn it on and give it the raw materials and press the right buttons, will produce any object in the catalog. The range of products that can be produced is large, encompassing high-performance structures, massively parallel supercomputers, and additional molecular manufacturing systems.... Between input of raw materials and the removal of finished products, no labor is necessary." --K.Eric Drexler.

Truly mind-boggling.