Zbigniew Rozanek, from Poland, not only constructed the smallest bicycle, he also rode it a distance of 5 m (16 ft) and all the way into record history! The front wheel measured just 11 mm (0.43 in) in diameter. The rear wheel was 13 mm (0.51 in) in diameter. "Breaking records is my hobby," says the enterprising electrician.
James Gimzewski, at the IBM laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland, created a calculator with a diameter of less than one millionth of a millimeter. The molecular abacus consists of 10 molecules of carbon 60 that can be moved along a microscopic groove. The molecules that make up the counters are molecules of carbon 60 or "buckyballs". These consist of 60 atoms of carbon, which bond together to form a ball with the same structure as the surface of a soccer ball. The "finger", which pushes the buckyballs around, is the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope, just one atom wide at its tip. If the buckyballs were scaled up to the size of an actual soccer ball, the end of the microscope would be taller than the Eiffel Tower!