Kodak's First Digital Camera

Way back in 1975 -- when Kodachrome color slides and Kodak Instamatics were all the rage -- Kodak researcher Steve Sasson built the first digicam, cobbled together from spare parts and bleeding edge digital technology.

The lens was from a used parts bin on Kodak's Super 8 camera assembly line, it used a futuristic CCD image sensor (now commonplace) and took 23 seconds to record a crude 100 line black and white image onto cassette tape.

Sasson explains, "On the side of our portable contraption, we shoehorned in a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder.  Add to that 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, several dozen digital and analog circuits all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards, and you have our interpretation of what a portable all electronic still camera might look like."

The device was semi-portable, and a massive VCR-sized microcomputer was used to display the images on a TV screen using a primitive frame store, but I doubt that the Kodak executives saw digital technology as a credible threat to their existing product line.

The Kodak Apparatus Division Research Laboratory team demonstrated the technology to a number of people within Kodak in 1976 as "Film-less Photography." I can't imagine the title went over well, considering Kodak's position as the world's leading producer of photochemical film. Still, 32 years later it turns out to be prophetic as Kodak struggles to reinvent itself as a digital company.

A patent was issued for the technology, but it was decades ahead of its time. Sasson kept the prototype as he moved around the company, but Kodak didn't publicly acknowledge the creation of the world's first digicam until 2001.

Kodak: A thousand nerds - We had no idea

Comments

[Bob]

Wow. Now that is impressive. Surely as revolutionary as the Box Brownie was in it's day. I love the cassette tape as a mass storage device. Sony had exactly the same idea with their early digital cameras, but used floppy discs instead.

The Kodak blog via the link in the article makes interesting reading too. Sasson mentions they thought it'd take 15-20 years for the technology to make it to mass market. That's about right. We got our first digital camera - a Sanyo - in 1996. The photos were stored on an internal flash chip inside the camera and you transferred them to your PC via a serial cable, but it also had a tv-out. What goes around, comes around, they say.

[Torgo]

I like the camera. It has character.

A sleek digital camera is shown in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I wonder when the idea of this type of photography first came up?

[Duncan]

This is hilarious. It prompted me to go searching (in vain) for a digital camera I vaguely remember from the early 90s: as I recall, it was a grey, bow-fronted, grooved grey box with a lens in the middle. I think it had a Nikon lens mount, and the name began with 'L'; anyone know what this was?

What I did find on my search was this amazing project, building large-format cameras with flatbed scanners. My LIDE 20's no longer safe!

[Bojo Matrix]

I spent 16 years working for Kodak Professional and I must say it was a long strange wonderful trip. My old office in my house that used to be my Kodak office is full of all kinds of Kodak "retro" memorabilia... including cameras, film, digital sensors displays, memory cards, batteries, posters, etc. When I am in my office I have very fond memories of my travels with the company... but there is one thing that gets me when I think about it too much... we were so high on profits and egos that we couldnt get out of our own way... which is the case today. Look at the latest CEO... riding the final wave of the Yellow Titanic... working Wall Street with the companies last breath.. he too will rake in the millions as he continues to drive the company into the ground while banking heavy profits at the expense of the companies intellectual property and human capital... what a sad tale.