History of the Digital Camera
August 19, 2010 by Binary Camera
Filed under best digital cameras
Digital Camera Background
The first digital camera was originally set to be a tool to help the space program take photos of planets. Eugene F. Lally of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was the first to explain how you could use photos in the digital world. This would help astronauts to know what they were going into with photos of space and planets. This greatly helped to step the process forward in taking digital photos.
Even though the space program was the first to consider and document using a digital camera to take photos, they were not the first to build a working model. Willis Adcock developed plans to build a film less camera but it’s not known if a working model was ever built. It was left up to an engineer at Eastman Kodak by the name of Steven Sasson to develop the very first working digital camera.
In 1975 Sasson built the first digital camera that was anything less than spectacular. The specifications of the camera were:
• Eight pounds (3.6 Kg)
• Black and White photos only
• Recorded photos on a cassette tape
• Resolution of 0.01 megapixels
• 23 second to capture an image
This camera was never intended for public use or sale. It was used in technical experiments and was made only for the use by the institute.
In 1981 Sony made an attempt to produce its own version of a digital camera. The Sony Mavica was basically a video recorder that took still images. It recorded the images into a floppy disk and the quality of pictures was that of televisions at the time. This type of camera went commercial but was around $20,000.
In 1990 Dycam Model 1 was the first commercially available digital camera to hit the market. It has the ability to plug up to a PC or Mac computer to download the pictures from. Kodak followed with its model in 1991 and in 1995 the first digital camera with a LCD screen was released. As the years go on the cameras become more cheap and the amount of megapixels increases.
Types of Digital Cameras
Today’s digital cameras come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Like most devices today, digital cameras are getting smaller and smaller. There are digital cameras that are as small as a match box. Some companies offer custom pictures to be printed on the camera or custom colors. Virtually any type of camera you can think of you can find a digital camera that’s been made for you.
