But I got to thinking---always an idea killer---and I developed a conundrum worthy of posting here.

How would you describe nanotechnology to someone who's somewhere in the past? (Right now my story is set somewhere between 1945 and 1950, but I'm not firmly bound to that---I'm not firmly bound to anything 'cause I haven't written anything down yet at all.)

Saying "tiny little robots" just doesn't cut it for me. I could say "robots the size of germs," but would that really be accurate?

I've in mind that the description is being given to someone who's (a) at least high-school educated of that period, but (b) definitely not a science fiction fan.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Nanotech would be virtually incomprehensible for anyone but the most advanced thinkers and dreamers in the WW2/post era. Explaining it to the layman would be virtually impossible, imo. Remember that a computer back then filled a high school gym and was made of huge tube transistors. Robots were still science fiction and few, if anyone, dreamed that they could be small enough to fit inside the human body.

You're best bet is to not explain it. If a character time travels and uses nanotech to heal someone, have him hide it and lie to the any characters of that era. First off, any responsible time traveler wouldn't say a word about it (messing with the timeline and whatnot) and even if he did people would think he was crazy.

Shoot up the wounded with "morphine" to ease the pain, but nanites could be in the syringe to enter the body and heal it. Then have the character wrap up the wounds and "hope for the best." Just play around with ideas like that to hide the tech using standard techniques of the day.

Just my $0.02.

Without, say, a remote controled car(or something similar) to demonstrate and then a smaller one and then holding his thumb and forefinger together and saying, now imagine a hundred of them this small....

Or the nanotech could just be a limited supply of good spirits.

Driving on the highway, travelling at 75 MPH a car passes you doing 76. They take forever to pass you because they are going one mile per hour relative to your speed.

A car passes you doing 95 and you think they are insane.

A guy standing on the side of the road, looks pretty much the same from 400 yards away as from three hundred yards away, but as you get closer, he becomes more of a blur as you whoosh by.

That's relativity. Now expand those speeds to celestial speeds.

Carbon fiber contruction.
Smaller, cooler, faster microprocessors (nanoprocessors?)
Microscopic remote controlled medical devices inside human blood vessals.

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What I don't expect:
Nanites: Microcscopic robots with a built in computer capable of artifical intelligence.

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Relativity for dummies.

Driving on the highway, travelling at 75 MPH a car passes you doing 76. They take forever to pass you because they are going one mile per hour relative to your speed.

A car passes you doing 95 and you think they are insane.

A guy standing on the side of the road, looks pretty much the same from 400 yards away as from three hundred yards away, but as you get closer, he becomes more of a blur as you whoosh by.

That's relativity. Now expand those speeds to celestial speeds.

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A simple explanation: germs that take orders.

[edited 'cause I clicked before my last sentence was completed.]

Someone in the 1940s would understand machinery. they would also know about disease.
The concept of autotoms, or robots, were already known, if not by the general public, at least by a large portion of the "in the know" public. The 1939 World's Fair had a lot of autonomous machinery. Cars that drove themselves, robot exibits, all sorts of things so the people would have a basic understanding of robots.

I'm not fond of laying out too much of what I'm working on---it's like once I've written it down in any detail, it's done for me. Short outlines and notes are about all I can manage. Too much detail, and it's already done and I never get around to it. (My energy for working on it right now is high---I'm having my best writing period since I gave up Internet Fan Fiction...)

That being said, I like "rstegman"'s explanation.

You're driving a car at 50 miles per hour. As you pass a man standing on the side of the road, he throws a baseball in the same direction you're traveling at 100 miles per hour.

To you, it looks like the ball is going 50 miles per hour. To the man, it looks like it's going 100. Pretty simple, right?

So, here's the trick. You pass by the man going at 75% of the speed of light, right when he flashes a light. To him, it obviously looks like that pulse is going away from him at the speed of light. How fast does that pulse look like it's going to you?

25% the speed of light? Nope.

That's the obvious answer, but it's wrong. That same pulse looks to you like it's going away from you at exactly the speed of light.

There you go. THAT is where all that wierdness about time slowing down comes in. The fact is, no matter WHAT frame of reference you're in, the speed of light is constant. It sounds ugly until you decide to agree that time isn't constant, and suddenly the math starts to work out. It's creepy, honestly. Once you figure that out, start asking yourself how gravity works and prepare to have your mind boggled.

Freaky, huh?

As far as nanotech . . . still magic, even in this day and age. I'd go with the deliberately confusing explanation that makes the eyes of the character being spoken to glaze over. That's always fun to write.

Millenium man: They are little tiny, microscopic (Great redundancy there) robots that flow through your blood to help fix your body.

40's man: Say what?

MM: Little robots that heal you.

FM: What the devil is a robot?

MM: They're machines.

FM: Like a tractor?

MM: Sort of...

FM: Who's drivin it?

MM: It drives itself.

FM: Boy are you one crazy son of a gun. Are you kidding me? 'Cause this ain't funny.

MM: No, I'm serious.

FM: So you're tellin me that there's a bunch of miniature tractors in my body, fixin stuff with no one tellin them what to do? How do you know they won't kill me? Why didn't you just shoot me instead?

MM: They are programmed to know what to fix and what to leave alone. You're fine.

FM: Well, how much gas they got?

MM: They don't have any gas.

FM: No gas? How do they drive?

MM: They use your body's electric current to power themselves.

FM: . . . Well that's a nice story. Why don't you write it down. I hear magazines will buy stuff like that.

At this point, the SM is truly convinced that MM is crazy.

In your scenario:

Scientist: It fision
Averege Joe: What?
S: Splitting an atom.
A: How do you get a hammer that small?
S: you don't, you shoot subatomic pariticles at it.
A: Guns aren't that small.
S: No you use an accellerator - like a cathode ray tube in your tv.
A: Yeah right, you use a tv tube to shoot an atom and make more energy than burning a truck full of coal. Crazy.

Therefore, by the arguement above 40's people didn't understand nuclear energy.
There'd be plenty who'd be ignorant enough back then to follow this line of thought, but then there are plenty today who would think you were pulling their leg.

PS Robots were first suggested in the 30s.

You have to remember, the average Joe and Jane did not go to college in the 40's. The US was still in it's industrialization period where only the upper-middle class and up really went to college. There was no such thing as student loans back then and well paying jobs didn't require a 4-year degree, so the level of education isn't near what it is now with 4-year degrees being common, masters degrees becoming common, and the information superhighway well entrenched in society.

So unless the MC is dealing with someone with a good education and/or a well read SciFi background the chances of someone in the 40's truly understanding on any level what nanotech is is slim to none. Not to mention you are dealing with the beginnings of the Cold War/Red Scare era. So most westerners would wonder "where" the technology came from, too.

Jammrock

(I've ruled out SF reading for my characters for the moment---fifteen thousand words in, and maybe anothe fifteen thousand before I get to the point where the nanotechnology is actually explained.)

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We still don't know why this technology is being explained.

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It's not germane to the discussion. I'm interested in the technical aspects of writing it---how would one explain nanotechnology and how it works (or is supposed to work), to someone in the past. The actual era doesn't matter---Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, Shogunate Japan, post-WWII America---it could be any of them.

The circumstances could be just about anything---say, a time traveler's nanotech thingies got away from him by accident while visiting Davidic Jerusalem, or somebody stumbled on inventing it and is trying to take over the world with it, or the nanos themselves came from a distant planet as spatial spores. Anything'll do. (My plan-of-writing is not any of those.)

If it is something used for bad, or is bad, One might write it simply by saying it is a new disease and discribe the effects

One might talk in the line of insects smaller than fine dust. Again one would talk about the effects.

One might discuss how it is transmitted (air, physical contact, swallowed, through wounds, through the skin.
one might also mention what people might do to protect themselves. washing regularly, avoiding certain soils, etc. fully cooking foods, etc. cleaning hands with wine, etc.

The fundamental point of an explanation is to change another person's conception of something in such a way as to affect behavior. If we don't know what behavior is to be changed, and how, then we cannot know what explanation is to be used.

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I wouldn't bother explaining any future technology at all if I didn't have a definite idea of what I wanted to accomplish with that explanation. Particularly if I were a time traveler, that would just be irresponsible.

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An explanation might be advanced to the characters after use---say, after emergency medical treatment involving imported nanotechnology---which introduces another set of problems. ("Why did you do this terrible thing to me?" "But we saved your life!")

As for the Star Trek Prime directive idea, I think that the history of our own world has demonstrated that you have to be very careful about introducing advanced technology to people who are likely to weaponize that technology and use it to destroy their neighbors or themselves. Since the "aliens" in the Trekiverse are basically humans with a bit of latex somewhere on their heads, it's actually a very sensible rule. Restricting even obviously benevolent interaction with non-starfaring species is unexpectedly wise. I suppose that somewhere along the way somebody realized that it doesn't help matters to give someone positive reasons to mistake you for gods.

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The sad thing is, when I read this, my first thought was deoxyribonucleic acid.

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I'm not sure of the precise dates, but I think Binder's story came out two or three years before Asimov wrote his first robot story. ("Robbie," also known as "Strange Playfellow.") Certainly robots---as we know them---figured in other stories before then. ("Helen O'Loy," Lester Del Rey, for example.)

The situation can be anything. I threw a few ridiculous ones out. I'm sure the great majority of you can come up with some more of your own---possibly even better than what I actually intend to use when I get there. It's still some distance away, maybe half the novel (I'm maybe one-fifth through) and much of what comes in between it is still working itself out in my mind.