Fab Digital Photography Blog

The History Of Digital Photography - From Tradition To Technology

April 25th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

While traditional photography has been in existence since the nineteenth century, when parts of the Civil War were documented on film, the development of digital photography is more recent. It was only in the 1990s that digital cameras first became available to the public; however, the technology that made digital photography possible had been in development since the 1960s.

The Beginning Of Digital Photography

The beginning of digital technology can be traced back to as early as 1963. It was then that a videodisk camera was invented by a photography student at Sanford University. This camera had the capability to take a picture and store it on a disc for several minutes.

In 1969, Willard Boyle and George Smith invented an image sensor, called the charged-couple device (CCD), at Bell Labs. It was an attempt at creating a semiconductor memory for computers, but now this device is used in all digital cameras. By 1970, the two inventors had incorporated the device into a video camera that produced high-quality imagery, suitable for use in broadcast television.

Sony Corporation was the first to produce a digital camera prototype in 1981, known as the Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera), which is most simply described as a video camera that was capable of taking still frames. The camera, which used CCD technology, could hold up to twenty-five high-quality images and up to fifty images of lesser quality. Though it began the “digital camera revolution,” it is not considered to be a true digital camera.

The Kodak company played a large role in the history of digital photography. It was in 1986 that Kodak invented the first ever mega pixel sensor, which was capable of recording 1.4 million pixels. The next year, Kodak released seven products related to the storing, recording, manipulation, transmission, and printing of electronic still frame pictures. Finally, in 1991, a Nikon F-3 camera was released. It was a digital camera system aimed towards professional photojournalists.

In 1994, the Apple QuickTake 100 camera was released. It was the first digital camera in the history of digital photography to be made available to the public and that could be used on a home computer.

Since then, digital cameras have only improved in both function and design. For example, while the Apple QuickTake 100 was large and cumbersome, companies such as Toshiba, Nikon, and Olympus have developed digital cameras that are progressively smaller and more compact.

The Importance Of The History Of Digital Photography

The history of digital photography has affected several aspects of world history. Digital technology has been used in several different fields, including archaeology and space exploration. Without the development of this important technology, other areas would not have observed nearly as much scientific improvement.