A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a major technology used in digital imaging.
The following list comprises significant milestones in the development of photography technology.
Digital imaging or digital image acquisition is the creation of a digital representation of the visual characteristics of an object, such as a physical scene or the interior structure of an object. The term is often assumed to imply or include the processing, compression, storage, printing and display of such images. A key advantage of a digital image, versus an analog image such as a film photograph, is the ability to digitally propagate copies of the original subject indefinitely without any loss of image quality.
Video camera tubes are devices based on the cathode-ray tube that were used in television cameras to capture television images, prior to the introduction of charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors in the 1980s. Several different types of tubes were in use from the early 1930s, and as late as the 1990s.
A still video camera (SVC) is a type of electronic camera that takes still images and stores them as single frames of video. They peaked in popularity in the late 1980s and can be seen as the predecessor to the digital camera. However, unlike the latter, the image storage in such cameras is based on analog technology, rather than as a digital file.
Bryce Edward Bayer was an American scientist who invented the Bayer filter pattern, which is used in most modern color digital cameras. He has been called "the maestro without whom photography as we know wouldn't have been the same."
The Kodak Professional Digital Camera System or DCS, later unofficially named DCS 100, was the first commercially available digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera. It was a customized camera back bearing the digital image sensor, mounted on a Nikon F3 body and released by Kodak in May 1991; the company had previously shown the camera at Photokina in 1990. Aimed at the photo journalism market in order to improve the speed with which photographs could be transmitted back to the studio or newsroom, the DCS had a resolution of 1.3 megapixels. The DCS 100 was publicly presented for the first time in Arles (France), at the Journées de l'Image Pro by Mr Ray H. DeMoulin, the worldwide President of the Eastman Kodak Company. 453 international journalists attended this presentation, which took place in the Palais des Congres of Arles.
The history of the camera began even before the introduction of photography. Cameras evolved from the camera obscura through many generations of photographic technology – daguerreotypes, calotypes, dry plates, film – to the modern day with digital cameras and camera phones.
High-speed photography is the science of taking pictures of very fast phenomena. In 1948, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) defined high-speed photography as any set of photographs captured by a camera capable of 69 frames per second or greater, and of at least three consecutive frames. High-speed photography can be considered to be the opposite of time-lapse photography.
Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image is stored as a computer file ready for further digital processing, viewing, electronic publishing, or digital printing. It is a form of digital imaging based on gathering visible light.
Willard Sterling Boyle, was a Canadian physicist. He was a pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm he helped select lunar landing sites and provided support for the Apollo space program.
George Elwood Smith is an American scientist, applied physicist, and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device (CCD). He was awarded a one-quarter share in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor, which has become an electronic eye in almost all areas of photography".
An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to form an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves into signals, small bursts of current that convey the information. The waves can be light or other electromagnetic radiation. Image sensors are used in electronic imaging devices of both analog and digital types, which include digital cameras, camera modules, camera phones, optical mouse devices, medical imaging equipment, night vision equipment such as thermal imaging devices, radar, sonar, and others. As technology changes, electronic and digital imaging tends to replace chemical and analog imaging.
Eric R. Fossum is an American engineer who co-developed some of the active pixel image sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer, with the help of other scientists from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is a professor at Thayer School of Engineering in Dartmouth College.
Dean McCormack Peterson (1931–2004) was an American inventor, responsible for two of consumer photography's largest revolutions: the Kodak Instamatic camera, introduced in 1963, and the panoply of "point-and-shoot" cameras introduced in the late 1970s. Both of these inventions had a huge impact on consumer photography, and nearly every snapshot taken since the mid-1960s, and virtually every photo of any kind since the 1980s, have benefited from Peterson's pioneering work.
The Kodak Digital Camera System is a series of digital single-lens reflex cameras and digital camera backs that were released by Kodak in the 1990s and 2000s, and discontinued in 2005. They are all based on existing 35mm film SLRs from Nikon, Canon and Sigma. The range includes the original Kodak DCS, the first commercially available digital SLR.
Steven Van Slyke is an American chemist, best known for his co-invention of the Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) with Ching Wan Tang and his contributions to the commercial development of OLED displays. Van Slyke is currently the Chief Technology Officer Emeritus at Kateeva, Inc. Prior to joining Kateeva, he held various positions at Eastman Kodak and was involved in all aspects of OLED technology, from basic materials development to implementation of full-color OLED display manufacturing.
Michael Tompsett is a British-born physicist, engineer, and inventor, and the founder director of the US software company TheraManager. He is a former researcher at the English Electric Valve Company, who later moved to Bell Labs in the United States. Tompsett invented CCD imagers and designed and built the first ever video camera with a solid-state (CCD) sensor. Tompsett received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2017, with Eric Fossum, George Smith, and Nobukazu Teranishi. Tompsett has also received two other lifetime awards; the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame 2010 Pioneer Award, and the 2012 IEEE Edison Medal. The thermal-imaging camera tube developed from his invention also earned a Queen's Award in 1987.
Roger Douglas Melen (1946--2024) was an electrical engineer recognized for his early contributions to the microcomputer industry, and for his technical innovations.
Peter L. P. Dillon is an American physicist, and the inventor of integral color image sensors and single-chip color video cameras. The curator of the Technology Collection at the George Eastman Museum, Todd Gustavson, has stated that "the color sensor technology developed by Peter Dillon has revolutionized all forms of color photography. These color sensors are now ubiquitous in products such as smart phone cameras, digital cameras and camcorders, digital cinema cameras, medical cameras, automobile cameras, and drones". Dillon joined Kodak Research Labs in 1959 and retired from Kodak in 1991. He lives in Pittsford, New York.
