From the IEEE report on the singularity I found a cool reference to the birth of nanotechnology in the article titled “Rupturing The Nanotech Rapture” By Richard A.L. Jones:

“The birth of nanotechnology is popularly taken to be 1989, when IBM Fellow Don Eigler used a scanning tunneling microscope to create the company’s logo out of xenon atoms.”

By working with xenon and nickel at very low temperatures, an IBM
scientist was the first to use a tiny needle to position individual atoms
on a surface.