ABSTRACT
An area in which the military–industrial–academic complex and aspects of big science combined during the Cold War to form a technoscience was the development of material science. The origins of the new field of material science had close connections and often overlapped with work in electronics, especially in the area of research on semiconducting materials, but material science extended well beyond semiconductors and by the end of the twentieth century it was also being influenced by developments in biotechnology. Like the transistor, the laser had roots in both electronics and material science. Another area in which research into material science erased the boundaries between science and technology and reflected the idea of technoscience, was the field of superconductivity, especially the development of high temperature superconductivity. A final area of material science in which the boundaries between science and technology became erased was nanotechnology, a term derived from nanometer, or one billionth of a meter.
