Mechanical computing gets second birth...on the nanoscale

The Telegraph : Charles Babbage was a British inventor who designed steam-powered, mechanical computers, 100 years before electronic computers were invented. However, his creations never caught on, and are now quite limited in comparison to their electric brethren. Now, nanotechnology is giving the idea of mechanical computers a second life. David Leigh of Manchester University has described how moving molecular pieces could serve as switches, levers, gears, and other mechanical components of systems that behave like Babbage’s Analytical Engine . One international team has already created nanoscale gears and motors and hopes to move on to more complicated constructions. However, the macroscopic machines can’t just be scaled down to nanoscopic levels because quantum mechanical effects influence how the molecules interact. The researchers do have real-world guides for their work, though. Naturally occurring molecules such as proteins behave and interact mechanically with each other in processes that could influence nanomechanical design.