History of Digital Cameras - Very Colorful History Indeed

Digital technology is like a wave of the future. The video camcorder was once upon a time called the Father of Digital Cameras. The video camcorder was used to record videos to be telecast on the television. It was analog in nature. In 1972, when NASA converted analog format to digital format to enhance the images on computers, digital video cameras were born. NASA created CCD (Charged-Coupled-device) which initially created images of 100 x 100 then 500 x 500 with a pixel array in 1978, then 800 x 800 pixels and it progressed in 1024 x 1024 pixels in 1982.

In 1988, the Fuji DS-1P was invented and it became the first digital camera in the history of digital cameras that recorded images as a computerized file. It recorded images in 16mb internal memory card with the help of battery. This camera was never marketed and thus never made it into the history of digital cameras. The true commercially used digital camera was launched in 1986 by Kodak. Kodak launched its first Profession Digital Camera System (DCS) the world’s first megapixels sensor. At the same time, Sony introduced their Professional Pro Mavica MVC-5000. Mavica was short for “Magnetic Video Cam” which it was but it still wasn’t a digital camera.

The first real digital camera in the history of digital cameras was introduced in 1990, the Dycam Model I, and it produced black and white pictures of 320 x 240 pixels. It was capable of storing 32 compressed images on 1MB of built in RAM. The camera was attached to a computer to transfer images. Then, in 1992, Kodak introduced its DCS 200 which had a built in hard drive for video recording. Black and White and Color to some extent was possible. Resolution was 4 times that of the still video camera of that time. DCS 200 provided path breaking quality for photographers at that time. In 1994, Apple invented the first mass-market color digital camera with 640 x 480 pixel CCD. It had a fixed focus, 50mm lens and a built in flash. But it could store only 8 images, plus the camera was a bit clumsy, but it had set the tone for the future. Olympus invented it in 1994 with a resolution of 768 x 576 pixels, and it stored images on a removable memory card. The technology was good but needed
more improvements.

Kodak

Later on, Kodak made another major contribution to the history of digital cameras by developing the Photo CD. Photographers could take snaps on camera and take it to a Kodak store and get professional quality print outs. Simultaneously, along with image resolution, capturing image, its color perfection, rotating and such features were also worked on by various companies like Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Kodak and others.

The market of Digital cameras took off with the advent of color inkjet and the internet. Today the digital cameras have become cheaper than ever, and their popularity is zooming by the minute.

Kodak played a major role in initializing things and starting the history of digital cameras. However the credit of developing the first digital camera goes to Apple.