ABSTRACT
Why is it that engineers are so gung ho about making things smaller? What spurs the relentless push toward compactness in so many modern things? Of course there are exceptions, such as monster trucks, skyscrapers, and passenger planes that we are always trying to make bigger-but even large things like these are possible because so many other things have been made smaller. The computers required to navigate a 747 used to take up the same space as an entire 747.
