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.