Kodak’s First Digital Camera
Way back in 1975 -- the first recorded attempt at building a digital camera was created by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak. At that time Kodachrome color slides and Kodak Instamatics were all the rage -- Steve Sasson built this first digicam, cobbled together from spare parts and bleeding edge digital technology. It used the then-new solid-state CCD image sensor chips developed by Fairchild Semiconductor in 1973. The camera weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg), recorded black and white images to a cassette tape, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), and took 23 seconds to capture its first image in December 1975. The prototype camera was a technical exercise, not intended for production. The lens was from a used parts bin on Kodak's Super 8 camera assembly line, it used a futuristic CCD image sensor (now commonplace) and took 23 seconds to record a crude 100 line black and white image onto cassette tape.
Sasson explains, " It had a lens that we took from a used parts bin from the Super 8 movie camera production line downstairs from our little lab on the second floor in Bldg 4. On the side of our portable contraption, we shoehorned in a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder. Add to that 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, several dozen digital and analog circuits all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards, and you have our interpretation of what a portable all electronic still camera might look like." The device was semi-portable, and a massive VCR-sized microcomputer was used to display the images on a TV screen using a primitive frame store, but I doubt that the Kodak executives saw digital technology as a credible threat to their existing product line.
It took nearly a year to build the device, but it was finally ready in December 1975. It sported a 0.01 megapixel resolution, and it took 23 seconds to commit the photograph to the tape. The Kodak Apparatus Division Research Laboratory team demonstrated the technology to a number of people within Kodak in 1976 as "Film-less Photography." I can't imagine the title went over well, considering Kodak's position as the world's leading producer of photochemical film. Still, 32 years later it turns out to be prophetic as Kodak struggles to reinvent itself as a digital company. Obviously, the camera is only of so much use if you have a way to actually display the photos it takes. This was also taken care of by Sasson's team: they built a custom playback device that
could take the 100-line image, interpolate it to 400 lines, and display it on an NTSC television. The two devices were demonstrated all throughout Kodak in 1976, leading to many interesting questions from the audience. "Why would anyone ever want to view his or her pictures on a TV? How would you store these images? What does an electronic photo album look like? When would this type of approach be available to the consumer?" While Sasson and his team were "being crazy", they realised full well that with time and technological improvements, digital photography could have a major impact on technology. The technical report describing the camera read: "The camera described in this report represents a first attempt demonstrating a photographic system which may, with improvements in technology, substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future." A patent was issued for the technology, but it was decades ahead of its time. Sasson kept the prototype as he moved around the company, but Kodak didn't publicly acknowledge the creation of the world's first digicam until 2001. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX8jm1pqPyo&feature=player_embedded Works Cited -http://laughingsquid.com/the-first-digital-camera-1975/ -http://www.osnews.com/story/23741/The_First_Digital_Camera -http://www.retrothing.com/2008/05/kodaks-first-di.html