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The Story of the First Portable Digital Camera
Daily Ink
Stored in: Tools
Posted On: May 12 2008
By: Bryan Partington
Archival Photo
The Kodak blog recently posted Engineer and "Curious Soul" Steve Sasson's recollections of the development of the first portable digital camera in 1975.
Kodak's wealth of underutilized innovation and engineering talent has gone largely unsung outside the company, which was one of the first pioneers into the digital realm. For all its inflexibility and inability to remain a leader in digital photography, Kodak was actually the very first to develop and market digital cameras.
First, with the dsc420 in the SLR market, and then with the dc200 in the point and shoot market, Kodak was always at the forefront of digital imaging.
Not only were they among the first to make digital photography a reality for consumers, but they also were the first to explore the possibilities of the technology decades earlier, when they developed a digital camera that recorded digital images to a cassette tape and played them back on a television.
Sasson describes the first reactions to their toaster sized camera and VCR like playback device.
After taking a few pictures of the attendees at the meeting and displaying them on the TV set in the room, the questions started coming. 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?
We now know the answers to these questions, and the importance of the internet in providing an outlet for the torrent of imagery created by the widespread adoption of digital photography. At the time, however, the internet was only very recently developed and not particularly graphical.
It saddens me a bit that Kodak, for all of its early innovation and interest in digital photography, has fallen by the wayside, but it does illustrate how dependent innovation is on converging technologies and changes in culture. 10% inspiration, 10% perspiration, and 80% timing.
For further reading on Kodak's engineers, and the company's struggles with bringing their pioneering innovations successfully to market, check out New York Times Article.
Otherwise, in Tools:
- Previously: Image Control
- Next: The Story of the First Photobooth
Utata Ink is a daily publication edited by Bryan Partington (striatic). Photos used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and obtained via the flickr API unless otherwise noted. To make a contribution to Ink, please visit Ink Me.
