How a 1975 Kodak Engineer Built the World's First Digital Camera

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In December 1975, 24-year-old Kodak engineer Steven Sasson built the world's first digital camera at Eastman Kodak, using a Fairchild CCD sensor, a Super 8 lens, and a cassette tape for storage. The device weighed around 8 pounds, captured a 0.01-megapixel black-and-white image, and took 23 seconds to record a single photo. Kodak patented the invention in 1978 and earned licensing revenue for decades, but shelved the project to protect its profitable film business. By the 2000s, digital photography had gone mainstream and competitors had taken the lead, contributing to Kodak filing for bankruptcy in 2012. The camera's core technology — converting light into digital data — remains the foundation of modern image sensors found in IoT devices, smartphones, and machine-vision systems today.

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