A Summarized History of Digital Photography
Digital camera technology developed from the technology which recorded television images. A video tape recorder took images from a television camera in 1951 by translating the information into electrical impulses and then saved it in a magnetic tape. On 17th October 1969, Willard Boyle and George Smith came up with image sensor, Change-Coupled Device (CCD) that has become the central point of the digital cameras made in Bell Labs. It is interesting that Boyle and Smith were initially trying to make a computer semiconductor memory. They were also in the process of developing a solid state camera to be utilized in video phones. The two immediately sketched the basic structures of CCD and then defined its operation’s concept. Here is a history of digital photography.
Boyle and Smith had made a CCD into the first solid state video camera in the world by 1970. They demonstrated a CCD camera in 1975 that had sharp image quality which could be utilized in broadcast television. In 1981, Sony Corporation built a model digital camera, Mavica Electronic Still Camera. It was able to record descriptions in form of magnetic impulses on still video floppy disk (compact two-inch). The capture of the images was done on the disk by utilizing two CCD chips. One of the chips was used to store the luminance information while the other recorded the information on chrominance. This camera offered an image of 720,000 pixels which could be stored on the floppy disk in either field mode or flame. By the photographer selecting the frame mode, the sensor could record a picture on double tracks. As many as twenty five images were recorded on any of the two disks.
At that period, it is the MVC-500 that was leading in image quality. It was then placed in a video reader which was linked to a color printer or a television monitor. The Mavicas may not have been considered a digital camera though it marked the beginning of the digital camera revolution. It is in 1986 that Kodak came up with first megapixel sensor that could record up to 1.4 million pixels and that could lessen the digital photo-quality print of a 5×7 inch photo. In 1991, Kodak developed a professional digital camera system, Nikon F-3, which was specifically made for photojournalists. Nikon F-3 camera was equipped with a sensor that had 1.3-megapixel sensor. In 1990, Logitech released a Dycam Model 1 black and white digicam which was the first complete digital computer camera and that could stall thirty two compressed images. Apple QuickTake 100 camera was released in 1994 and it worked with a computer through a serial cable.
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