Photography trivia - what was the first digital camera?

Friday morning fun! Can you name the model?

I'm going to say it was Kodak.

I could google it. lol

I'm gonna predict a model of Sony Mavica. (for consumer models anyway)

The first ever was probably on the Voyager space probe.

just googled it and found out. I wasn't too far off. Voyager was launched in 1977. The first digital camera ever was developed in 1975

Great post Bill... just the thing for me to puzzle over. Since I had no clue I ran a search. This was some info I found interesting.

Digital camera technology is directly related to and evolved from the same technology that recorded television images. In 1951, the first video tape recorder (VTR) captured live images from television cameras by converting the information into electrical impulses (digital) and saving the information onto magnetic tape. Bing Crosby laboratories (the research team funded by Crosby and headed by engineer John Mullin) created the first early VTR and by 1956, VTR technology was perfected (the VR1000 invented by Charles P. Ginsburg and the Ampex Corporation) and in common use by the television industry. Both television/video cameras and digital cameras use a CCD (Charged Coupled Device) to sense light color and intensity.

I still don't have the answer and wouldn't spoil the fun by posting it anyway.

digital in the 50's! who'd have thought?

I'm thinking the mag tape was more analog than digital at that stage. But still an amazing fact - we've come a long way baby...

Actually on the consumer end the Sony wasnt the first on the general market. What was first was the CCD cameras for astronomy, RCA produced the 320x512 chip and Kitt Peak got it a couple of years after that they were sold to the amateur market. My friend and I split the costs on making our own cook book CCD camera, that chip cost use $2,200 back then, it had to be Nitrogen cooled as well to get an image, then you had to pull the image out because the screen was black when you first looked at it. Also it wasnt even an MP either.

Wow! how long ago was this?

Joves wrote: Actually on the consumer end the Sony wasnt the first on the general market. What was first was the CCD cameras for astronomy, RCA produced the 320x512 chip and Kitt Peak got it a couple of years after that they were sold to the amateur market. My friend and I split the costs on making our own cook book CCD camera, that chip cost use $2,200 back then, it had to be Nitrogen cooled as well to get an image, then you had to pull the image out because the screen was black when you first looked at it. Also it wasnt even an MP either.

Were you shooting RAW?

Yasko wrote: Wow! how long ago was this?

Around 79" or 80". Kitt Peak got their first chips in 77" if I rmember right. It is hell getting old because theyears start to run together. And actually Fairchilds made the firs commercial chips but they sucked for imaging.

The concept of digitizing images on scanners, and the concept of digitizing video signals, predate the concept of making still pictures by digitizing signals from an array of discrete sensor elements. At Philips Labs. in New York, Edward Stupp, Pieter Cath and Zsolt Szilagyi filed for a patent on "All Solid State Radiation Imagers" on 6 September 1968 and constructed a flat-screen target for receiving and storing an optical image on a matrix composed of an array of photodiodes connected to a capacitor to form an array of two terminal devices connected in rows and columns. Their US patent was granted on 10 November 1970.[8] Texas Instruments engineer Willis Adcock designed a filmless camera that was not digital and applied for a patent in 1972, but it is not known whether it was ever built.[9] The first recorded attempt at building a digital camera was in 1975 by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak.[10][11] It used the then-new solid-state CCD image sensor chips developed by Fairchild Semiconductor in 1973.[12] The camera weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg), recorded black and white images to a cassette tape, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), and took 23 seconds to capture its first image in December 1975. The prototype camera was a technical exercise, not intended for production.

inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bldigitalcamera.htm

According to about.com, the Mavica isn't considered a true digital camera because it took freeze frames of video. It looks like the posts that predicted Kodak are correct. Here's a little bit of the article from the link above.

Texas Instruments patented a film-less electronic camera in 1972, the first to do so. In August, 1981, Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the camera which was the first commercial electronic camera. Images were recorded onto a mini disc and then put into a video reader that was connected to a television monitor or color printer. However, the early Mavica cannot be considered a true digital camera even though it started the digital camera revolution. It was a video camera that took video freeze-frames.

Since the mid-1970s, Kodak has invented several solid-state image sensors that "converted light to digital pictures" for professional and home consumer use. In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world's first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5x7-inch digital photo-quality print. In 1987, Kodak released seven products for recording, storing, manipulating, transmitting and printing electronic still video images.

player wrote: inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bldigitalcamera.htm

According to about.com, the Mavica isn't considered a true digital camera because it took freeze frames of video. It looks like the posts that predicted Kodak are correct. Here's a little bit of the article from the link above.

Texas Instruments patented a film-less electronic camera in 1972, the first to do so. In August, 1981, Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the camera which was the first commercial electronic camera. Images were recorded onto a mini disc and then put into a video reader that was connected to a television monitor or color printer. However, the early Mavica cannot be considered a true digital camera even though it started the digital camera revolution. It was a video camera that took video freeze-frames.

Since the mid-1970s, Kodak has invented several solid-state image sensors that "converted light to digital pictures" for professional and home consumer use. In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world's first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5x7-inch digital photo-quality print. In 1987, Kodak released seven products for recording, storing, manipulating, transmitting and printing electronic still video images.

Like my post said, so what do I win?

Very interesting.

I saw a camera that I think was a Kodak and one photo could be saved on an old 5 1/4" disk. The quality of the photo was amazing.