The History Of Digital Photography

"Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face

, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man."

- Edward Steichen (1879-1973), American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator.

The art of photography is a true recorder of human history. By capturing permanent impressions of temporary events, a photograph (from Greek photos: light and graphe: draw) freezes moments in time for eternity. However, before the advent of digital photography, taking a photograph and processing it was a long and cumbersome process involving darkrooms and chemicals. Now, with digital cameras becoming ubiquitous, photographic film used in analog photography is sold only in niche markets, with the largest manufacturer Kodak having withdrawn from the segment .

Digital cameras differ from their analog counterparts in how they capture and store images. While analog cameras use film, digital cameras use a solid-state device called an image sensor (also called a Charge Coupled Device or CCD), containing millions of photosensitive (light-sensitive) diodes called photosites. When the shutter is opened momentarily, each photosite records the intensity of light on it as an electric charge, later translated into a number. This set of numbers can then be used to set the color and brightness of dots to reconstruct the image.

The history of digital photography can be traced back to the 1950s when the first video tape recorders (VTR) captured live images from television cameras by converting the information into electrical impulses (digital signal) and saving the information onto magnetic tape . Later the coded tape was run through a decoding machine which converted the coded signal back into pictures. Digital photography also received a major fillip during the space race of the 1960s. It was realized that satellites fitted with cameras could be used to spy on the enemy, but since there was no way to process film in space and returning it to Earth was inconvenient and expensive , the photographs could be digitized and the signals transmitted to Earth to be decoded and viewed.

Aside from these government initiatives, the private sector played a major role in making digital photography a ubiquitous technology today. In 1969 George Smith and Willard Boyle invented the CCD at Bell Labs. Four years later, Kodak engineer Steven Sasson used a CCD to produce a digital image. This was a major breakthrough as for the first time, images were recorded onto a solid chip (CCD) rather than onto tape. Texas Instruments was first off the block, patenting a film-less electronic camera in 1972. However, the first commercial digital camera was the Sony Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera), released in 1981. It recorded images as magnetic impulses on a two-inch still-video floppy disk, capturing them using two CCD (charge-coupled device ) chips in 720,000-pixel resolution.

The next major milestone was breaching the 1 million pixels or 1 megapixel barrier. In 1986, scientists at Kodak invented the worlds first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels. Images at this resolution could be used to produce 5x7-inch digital photo-quality prints. In 1990 Dycam marketed the first consumer digital camera sold in the United States, the Dycam Model 1 (also sold by Logitech as the Fotoman). Aggressive marketing by Kodak, and cooperation by different software and hardware providers, helped popularize digital photography. While Microsoft developed inexpensive digital image-making software, IBM helped develop an internet-based network image exchange. Hewlett-Packards color inkjet printers helped bring digital photography to the masses. The age of digital photography had well and truly begun.

by: Jim Knight

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