Hands were featured in Waldo (a 1943 short story by Robert Heinlein) and in Richard Feynman’s “Plenty of room at the bottom” 1959 lecture both of which were concerned with describing a field we now call nanotechnology. As I put it in my Aug. 17, 2009 posting,

Both of these texts feature the development of ‘smaller and smaller robotic hands to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular levels’ and both of these have been cited as the birth of nanotechnology.

The details are a bit sketchy but it seems that scientists at the University of Bath (UK) have created a tiny (nanoscale) tool that looks like a hand. From the University of Bath’s Dec. 12, 2011 news release,

The lower picture shows the AFM probe with the nano-hand circled. The upper image is a vastly enlarged image of the nano-hand, showing the beckoning motion spotted by Dr Gordeev.

Here’s a little more about Dr. Gordeev’s observation from the Dec. 12, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

Dr Sergey Gordeev, from the Department of Physics, was trying to create a nano-scalpel, a tool which can be used by biologists to look inside cells, when the process went wrong.

Dr Gordeev said: “I was amazed when I looked at the nano-scalpel and saw what appeared to be a beckoning hand.

“Nanoscience research is moving very fast at the moment, so maybe the nano-hand is trying to attract people and funders into this area.

…

The research group is using funding from Bath Ventures, an organisation which commercialises the results of the University’s research, and private company Diamond Hard Surfaces Ltd, to explore the use of hard coatings for nano-tools, making them more durable and suitable for delicate biological procedures.

I appreciate Dr. Gordeev’s whimsical notion that the hand might be trying to attract funding for this research group.