When Was The First Digital Photography Picture "Snapped"?

 By Rika Susan
 
  Where does the history of digital photography really start? Looking at various historical overviews,   it quickly becomes clear that the starting point depends quite a bit on your point of view.
 
 Digital cameras use image sensors instead of film to sample light. They do this thanks to the 
  photoelectric effect in which some metals release electrons when exposed to light.
 
 You could probably argue that Albert Einstein - who won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his 
 work on the photoelectric effect - got the ball rolling for digital photography!
 
 Often incorporated into the history of digital photography is the camera designed by Texas
 Instruments Inc. in 1972. However, this camera was not digital, but an analog-based, film-less
 device.
 
 In 1972 Steven Sasson of Kodak was instructed by his supervisor to try and find a way to build a
 camera using solid-state image sensors. These chips use photosensitive diodes called photosites to
 record light.
 
 An important marker in the history of digital photography was when Sasson snapped the first digital
 picture in December 1975. According to Sasson the image took 23 seconds to record onto the 
 cassette, and then another 23 seconds to read off a playback unit onto a television.
 
 However, no consumer camera was released at that stage by the company. Later, in 1986, Kodak
 invented the world's first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could
 produce a 5x7-inch digital photo-quality print.
 
 You can probably safely say that the first prototype digital camera was the Mavica (Magnetic Video
 Camera) released by Sony Corporation in the early 1980's. This was essentially an electronic video
 camera that produced still images which were recorded on two-inch floppy disks.
 
 The Mavica used a charge-coupled device (CCD), and the origins of the CCD can be traced back
 to October 1969. This was when George Smith and Willard Boyle invented the charge-coupled
 device at Bell Labs, where they were at the time attempting to create a new kind of semiconductor
 memory for computers.
 
 The CCD played quite a central role in the development of the digital camera. This technology is
 today also used in broadcasting, and in video applications that range from security monitoring to
 high-definition television. Facsimile machines, copying machines, image scanners, and bar code
 readers also make use of CCDs to turn light into useful information.
 
 After the Mavica, it was only in 1994 that Apple introduced the first digital camera for consumers,
 another milestone in the history of digital photography.
 
 The QuickTake 100 (this camera was co-developed with Kodak) worked with a home computer
 via a serial cable and featured a 640 x 480 pixel CCD. It could produce eight images stored in
 internal memory. It also had a built-in flash.
 
 Because of constraints around the size of the processor the QuickTake 100 looked more like a set
 of binoculars, but this soon changed, and modern digital cameras have taken on the familiar shape of
 film cameras.
 
 For more information visit http://www.Best-Digital-Photography.com Rika Susan researches,
 writes and publishes full-time on the Web. Copyright of this article: 2005 Rika Susan.

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