On Friday, Dec 20, 2002, at 18:02 Europe/London, Adam Woolfitt wrote:
Google found this site for meI was recently asked "What was the first digital camera "?Adam
http://www.digicamhistory.com - I can see I'm now going to spend hours looking through it.
Some dates quickly gleaned - I've only included significant steps forward, there are plenty of other prototypes and production models listed on this site which improved the spec of any particular stage of the technology. It is important to differentiate between an image electronically produced (but still analogue) - and a digital image - although of course at the time of capture, the charge on a ccd is still analogue even now. So you'll need to be careful with your definitions.
1970 Bell Labs constructed first solid state video camera
1972 Texas instruments patent a film-less electronic camera
1973 Fairchild Imaging produce first commercial CCD (100 x 100 pixels) which was used in first known operational CCD still image camera (1975 Kodak prototype camera - took 23 secs to record image onto cassette tape)
1976 First commercial CCD camera, Fairchild MV101, used to perform Procter and Gamble product inspections.
1980 Sony introduce first ccd colour videocam.
1981 Sony Mavica electronic still camera unveiled. Was not strictly a digital camera but a TV camera capable of writing TV quality stills onto magnetic disks, with a shutter that would allow it to freeze frames within the limits set by twin-field interlace making up the complete frame.
1982 Hitachi First consumer video camera with solid state (MOS - metal oxide semiconductor) image pickup device rather than an image pickup tube.
1984. COPAL PROTOTYPE.�� The Copal CV-1 electronic camera prototype had a� 2/3-inch CCD and a 9-27 mm zoom, f/1.2 lens.� It was Shown at Photokina in 1984 and in Popular Photography, January 1985, p55.
1984 HITACHI STILL VIDEO CAMERA PROTOTYPE. This camera had a 2/3-inch MOS image sensor with horizontal resolution of 300 TV lines.� Popular Photography, October 1984, p35
1986 CANON RC-701 STILL VIDEO CAMERA .� Canon was the first to market a still video camera, the professional model RC-701 (one source states that the 1981 Sony Mavica was marketed, but this has not been independently verified as of yet).
1988 FUJI DS-1P .�� The DS-1P was the first electronic camera to record images on digital memory cards. It was a still video camera, but stored images on a memory card instead of a floppy disk .�
1990 DYCAM MODEL 1 (Logitech FotoMan) .� Dycam Model 1 B&W digicam was the world's first completely digital consumer camera.� It stored 32 compressed images on internal 1MB RAM.� 1/3-inch, 376 x 240 pixel CCD at 256 gray levels.� TIFF or PICT 2 format.� 8mm fixed-focus lens.� Shutter 1/30 to 1/1000 second.� Built-in flash.� The Dycam worked similarly to the Canon XapShot except that it included the digitizing hardware in the camera itself.�
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Best,
Francis Newman
Webshot Ltd, UK
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