Original Digital Camera

[Yedrup]

Doesn't tell you much but interesting as to where digital camera came from.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/icon/meet-the-man-who-put-the-digital-into-digital-cameras/2005/10/11/1128796520785.html

Thanks to smh and author for the article.

Cheers,
Terry

[gecko]

Thanks for the link. Very interesting.
I studied physics at uni and one of my classmates went on to do his PhD in CCD's. I wonder where he is now!

Cheers
Gecko

[Dug]

Interesting but the main work was done by the US military for spy satellites. prior to Digital imaging film had to be re-entered and parachuted back to earth ( "Ice Station Zebra" if anyone remembers ) it was time consuming and impossible to get up to date photos of Russia and Cuba etc.

Digitizing the image allowed for photos to be sent back every time the satellite passed over the USA ( or Australia)

Hand held cameras were developed in the late 70's for intelligence gathering in the field that required photos to be sent back to the pentagon by phone or radio.

Yes kodak would have had a portion of this contract but there was a lot of money spent to develop the CCD chip, this is one reason the chips have remained relatively small intelligence gathering uses long lenses and this is easier to achieve with a smaller chip.

The people developing digital cameras had little use for wide angle or image quality just speed and distance:-)


cheers doug

[kinetic]

Just for the trivia value,
U2 spy planes still use wet film cameras (a system called Optical Bar Camera, 66 inch focal length), because they believe that they produce photographs that are clearer than digital images.... less practical if you are taking pics from a satellite though!