Steven Sasson in 1973, the year he started working at Eastman Kodak.
Imagine a world where photography is a slow process that is
impossible to master without years of study or apprenticeship. A world
without iPhones or Instagram, where one company reigned supreme. Such a
world existed in 1973, when Steven Sasson, a young engineer, went to
work for Eastman Kodak.
Two years later he invented digital photography and made the first digital camera.
Mr. Sasson, all of 24 years old, invented the process that allows us
to make photos with our phones, send images around the world in seconds
and share them with millions of people. The same process completely
disrupted the industry that was dominated by his Rochester employer and
set off a decade of complaints by professional photographers fretting
over the ruination of their profession.
It started out innocently enough.
Soon after arriving at Kodak, Mr. Sasson was given a seemingly
unimportant task — to see whether there was any practical use for a
charged coupled device (C.C.D.), which had been invented a few years
earlier.
“Hardly anybody knew I was working on this, because it wasn’t that
big of a project,” Mr. Sasson said “It wasn’t secret. It was just a
project to keep me from getting into trouble doing something else, I
guess.”
The very first digital camera created by Steven Sasson in 1973. This
camera was the basis for the US patent issued on December 26, 1978.
He quickly ordered a couple of them and set out to evaluate the
devices, which consisted of a sensor that took an incoming two
dimensional light pattern and converted it into an electrical signal.
Mr. Sasson wanted to capture an image with it, but the C.C.D. couldn’t
hold it because the electrical pulses quickly dissipated.
To store the image, he decided to use what was at that time a
relatively new process — digitalization — turning the electronic pulses
into numbers. But that solution led to another challenge — storing it on
RAM memory, then getting it onto digital magnetic tape.
The final result was a Rube Goldberg device with a lens scavenged
from a used Super-8 movie camera; a portable digital cassette recorder;
16 nickel cadmium batteries; an analog/digital converter; and several
dozen circuits — all wired together on half a dozen circuit boards.
It looks strange today, but remember, this was before personal
computers – the first build it yourself Apple computer kit went on sale
that next year for $666.66.
The camera alone was a historic accomplishment, but he needed to
invent a playback system that would take the digital information on the
cassette tape and turn it into “something that you could see” on a
television set: a digital image.
“This was more than just a camera,” said Mr. Sasson who was born and
raised in Brooklyn. “It was a photographic system to demonstrate the
idea of an all-electronic camera that didn’t use film and didn’t use
paper, and no consumables at all in the capturing and display of still
photographic images.”
The camera and the playback system were the beginning of the digital
photography era. But the digital revolution did not come easily at
Kodak.
“They were convinced that no one would ever want to look at their pictures on a television set.”
Mr. Sasson made a series of demonstrations to groups of executives
from the marketing, technical and business departments and then to their
bosses and to their bosses. He brought the portable camera into
conference rooms and demonstrated the system by taking a photo of people
in the room.
“It only took 50 milliseconds to capture the image, but it took 23
seconds to record it to the tape,” Mr. Sasson said. “I’d pop the
cassette tape out, hand it to my assistant and he put it in our playback
unit. About 30 seconds later, up popped the 100 pixel by 100 pixel
black and white image.”
Though the quality was poor, Mr. Sasson told them that the resolution
would improve rapidly as technology advanced and that it could compete
in the consumer market against 110 film and 135 film cameras. Trying to
compare it with already existing consumer electronics, he suggested they
“think of it as an HP calculator with a lens.” He even talked about
sending images on a telephone line.
Their response was tepid, at best.
“They were convinced that no one would ever want to look at their
pictures on a television set,” he said.
“Print had been with us for over
100 years, no one was complaining about prints, they were very
inexpensive, and so why would anyone want to look at their picture on a
television set?”
The main objections came from the marketing and business sides. Kodak
had a virtual monopoly on the United States photography market, and
made money on every step of the photographic process. If you wanted to
photograph your child’s birthday party you would likely be using a Kodak
Instamatic, Kodak film and Kodak flash cubes. You would have it
processed either at the corner drugstore or mail the film to Kodak and
get back prints made with Kodak chemistry on Kodak paper.
It was an excellent business model.
When Kodak executives asked when digital photography could compete,
Mr. Sassoon used Moore’s Law, which predicts how fast digital technology
advances. He would need two million pixels to compete against 110
negative color film, so he estimated 15 to 20 years. Kodak offered its
first consumer cameras 18 years later.
“When you’re talking to a bunch of corporate guys about 18 to 20
years in the future, when none of those guys will still be in the
company, they don’t get too excited about it,” he said. “But they
allowed me to continue to work on digital cameras, image compression and
memory cards.”
The first digital camera was patented in 1978. It was called the
electronic still camera. But Mr. Sasson was not allowed to publicly talk
about it or show his prototype to anyone outside Kodak.
In 1989, Mr. Sasson and a colleague, Robert Hills, created the first
modern digital single-lens reflex (S.L.R.) camera that looks and
functions like today’s professional models. It had a 1.2 megapixel
sensor, and used image compression and memory cards.
The
1989 version of the digital camera, known as the Ecam (electronic
camera).
This is the basis of the United States patent issued on May 14,
1991.
But Kodak’s marketing department was not interested in it. Mr. Sasson
was told they could sell the camera, but wouldn’t — because it would
eat away at the company’s film sales.
“When we built that camera, the argument was over,” Mr. Sasson said.
“It was just a matter of time, and yet Kodak didn’t really embrace any
of it. That camera never saw the light of day.”
Still, until it expired in the United States in 2007, the digital
camera patent helped earn billions for Kodak, since it — not Mr. Sasson —
owned it, making most digital camera manufacturers pay Kodak for the
use of the technology. Though Kodak did eventually market both
professional and consumer cameras, it did not fully embrace digital
photography until it was too late.
“Every digital camera that was sold took away from a film camera and
we knew how much money we made on film,” Mr. Sasson said. “That was the
argument. Of course, the problem is pretty soon you won’t be able to
sell film — and that was my position.”
Today, the first digital camera Mr. Sasson made in 1975 is on display
at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. President
Obama awarded Mr. Sasson the National Medal of Technology and Innovation
at a 2009 White House ceremony.
Three years later, Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy.
brw.com.au 15 Aug 2015
A classic example of companies stunting growth, defrauding inventors and operating a (unlawful) monopoly.
A McDonald's McFlurry.
