How the First Digital Camera Actually Worked - and Why Kodak Buried It

Explore more from the Simplex network: 🚀 Curious about space, black holes, planets, and the universe? Check out Simplex Space:    / @simplexspace10   😴 Looking for long, relaxing videos that are perfect for winding down or falling asleep? Check out The Amerisnooze:    / @theamerisnooze   In December 1975 a 24-year-old Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson pointed a toaster-sized box at a colleague and made the first digital photograph: 100 by 100 pixels, black and white, written to a cassette tape in 23 seconds. Kodak patented it, predicted the year it would beat film - and put it in a cupboard. This film takes the machine apart: how a charge-coupled device turns light into numbers, why the picture took 23 seconds to save, why you needed a television to see it, and why every camera and phone since is this box with the parts made smaller. Then it follows the decision Kodak made every year for twenty-five years - protect the film - and the twist nobody predicted: the digital camera died too, and Kodak is selling film again. Sources IEEE Spectrum - the first digital camera: components, 3.6 kg, 50 ms / 23 s / 30 s, Joy Marshall, "didn't see a market": https://spectrum.ieee.org/first-digit... Google Patents - US 4,131,919 "Electronic still camera", Lloyd and Sasson, filed 20 May 1977, granted 26 Dec 1978: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4... National Inventors Hall of Fame - Steven Sasson (National Medal of Technology and Innovation 2009; inducted 2011): https://www.invent.org/inductees/stev... PetaPixel - How Steve Sasson invented the digital camera (the demo, "that's cute", the 15-20 year prediction): https://petapixel.com/how-steve-sasso... The Economist, January 2012 - The last Kodak moment? (1976: 90% of US film, 85% of cameras; $16bn revenue; $31bn value; 132 years): https://www.economist.com/leaders/201... Harvard Business Review, July 2016 - Kodak's downfall wasn't about technology (the film business model): https://hbr.org/2016/07/kodaks-downfa... Rochester Business Journal, January 2012 - How Kodak lost its way (Larry Matteson's 1979 study, digital by 2010): https://rbj.net/2012/01/27/how-kodak-... Kodak - Photography history (the 1.4-megapixel sensor, 1986): https://www.kodak.com/en/company/page... Kodak DCS 100 (May 1991, Nikon F3, 1.3 MP, $20,000): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_D... Reviewed, 2006 - Kodak leads in US digital camera sales, 7 million in 2005 (IDC): https://www.reviewed.com/cameras/news... PetaPixel - Why Kodak died and Fujifilm thrived (the $60 loss per camera in 2001, Harvard case): https://petapixel.com/why-kodak-died-... CNN Money, 19 January 2012 - Eastman Kodak files for Chapter 11: https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/19/news... Bloomberg, 19 December 2012 - Apple, Google in group buying Kodak patents for $525 million: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl... American Bankruptcy Institute - Kodak's exit from Chapter 11, 3 September 2013: https://www.abi.org/feed-item/eastman... PetaPixel, August 2024 - The rise and crash of the camera industry in one chart (CIPA: ~120M shipped in 2010; 1.7M compacts in 2023): https://petapixel.com/2024/08/22/the-... Rochester Business Journal, October 2022 - Demand for film driving need for workers at Kodak (production quadrupled, plant running 24/7): https://rbj.net/2022/10/14/demand-for... TechRadar, 2023 - Kodak's reborn Super 8 film camera, $5,495, December 2023: https://www.techradar.com/cameras/kod... If you ever dropped a roll of film across a counter, tell us the camera, the year, and what was on the negatives you kept. If you worked at Kodak in Rochester, tell us what we got wrong - this archive is written in the comments. Simplex Machines takes apart the machines that built the world you grew up in, and finds out why they stopped. New film every Tuesday and Friday. Also from Simplex: Simplex Academy (every subject from zero) and Simplex Space (the universe in 4K).