How Nano Got Her Name

'Nano' is a morpheme most familiar now adays when prefixed to 'technology' to produce the word 'nanotechnology'. We vaguely understand that to mean very, very, very small (possibly molecular sixed) devices. These can include bearings, pulleys, and even whole motors. So, how small does 'nano' mean?

In 1957 there was an international convention to settle that and many related questions for the scientific community. What came out of that gathering was Internationsl System of Units usually referred to as the SI (French, you know). 'Nano' was borrowed from the Greek and later Latin word for ‘dwarf’. The prefixes they settled upon were powers of ten, but in lay terms, thousands 1000s, hundreds 100s, tens 10s, tenths 1/10s, hundredths 1,100s, thousandths 1/1,000s etc..Parts of the scheme were familiar with ‘mega’, ‘giga’, and ‘tera’ when applied to bytes. So, how did our boat come to be named a word ultimately derived from a diminutive?

As we first decided to dabble in the world of power boats we were taken with a Ranger Tugs 25 named Pico. From our table you will see that ‘pico’ is included in the SI meaning 10 to the minus 12th power. In everyday terms that’s a millionth. Small indeed! We thought the name fit and we also liked the nice lettering job. Pico served us well on both the West Coast and the East Coast, but she was limited in many ways. Twofootitus took hold of me and I dreamed of bigger boats. 

Our budget of time as well as money limited my dreams, but I saw that the Ranger Tugs 27 had enough more creature comforts and living space to be our next cruising boat. The one I found had very few miles and had never even been named. Trying to sell myself on such a modest increase I decided to name her Nano. Far from being a diminutive, a Nano (as you now know) is actually one thousand times as big as a Pico. I suppose that could be called compensation. I can live with that.