(pronounced von noi-man) A machine which is able to build a working copy of itself using materials in its environment. This is often proposed as a cheap way to mine or colonise the entire solar system or galaxy. An early fictional treatment was the short storey "Autofac" by Philip K. Dick, published in 1955, which actually seems to precede John von Neumann's original paper about self-reproducing machines (von Neumann, J., 1966, The Theory of Self-reproducing Automata, A. Burks, ed., Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL.).