Digital Photography, The Product of Bing Crosby and NASA

When was the first digital camera made. Until today i thought it was in the

80's. It turns out in 1951, Bing Crosby Laboratories introduced the first video

tape recorder (VTR). It took images from television cameras and converted them

to electrical impulses, and then saved them to a magnetic strip. Even though

the information was stored in analog, it transmitted digitally. So is this the

first digital camera. In the 1960's, NASA used digital technology to take and

transmit still and video images from the moon. Computers were then used to

enhance the images that were being sent from the space probes. Texas

Intstruments were the first to patent a film-less camera in 1972. Sony was the

first to commercially introduce the digital camera in 1981, the Mavica. But it

was a video camera that took freeze frames. It wasn't until 1986 that Kodak

introduced the first megapixel sensor. So, in your opinion, when was the first

digital camera introduced? Which one of these products truly revolutionized the

digital camera evolution?

I seriously doubt that the Crosby Laboratories equipment transmitted digitally. BTW I transmitted digital images in the 1980's and yes, a video camera was used to "freeze" the image. the quality of the images was awful, and most shops did not have the expensive Laser printers required to produce an image with any level of resolution. And yes I still have a kodak DC215 sub-megapixel camera. The earlier Kodak digital units were large clumsy boxes but which were incredibly useful in the Aircraft repair work I was doing. I consider the early Kodaks the cameras which really started the digital revolution. Unfortunately, Kodak failed to exploit this leadership, and was almost immediately overtaken by the Japanese designers and manufacturers. In the typical fashion of older American Companies, they kept outdated designs too long, and lacked the manufacturing and quality control skills to produce smaller, more efficient units. Now Kodak is trying to "quit" this market, another typical move of a loser company.

Was that the Bing Crosby of 'White Christmas' fame? And if so, how did he become involved in video recording?

Pooh, hard to argue. Can't the first massprinted capture of a TV camera generated picture count as the beginning of digital photography's roots? - Sure, those days it was printed in a wet darkroom, screened with a processcamera and so on, but the capture of the subject was at least electrical.

 

Being a bit interested in wireless picture transmission I doubt the NASA used digital modes to transmit images from the moon, since they started radioing analog SSTV pictures back to earth in 1964.

 

<http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2003-00026.html

 

and google for APT and similar. Keep in mind that almost any kind of picture transmission was analog those days.

 

I can't tell what revolutionized the digital camera evolution. Can't we pick the first CCD video camera? - I mean any modern digi P&S is nothing else technology wise than a videocamera to dumb to write all the information it's permanently capturing, when used with a LCD finder into a movie...

 

I don't know how far pixelcount really matters. There have been options to expose single 8mm movie frames on Polaroid on the amateur market. Is printing neccessary at all? Isn't VGA or TV resolution allowing the user to view pictures on screen enough? Or is that much needed at all? Aren't people already happy with what they can store and view on their cellphones? People used to keep contact prints of 35mm film in the old days. Postage stamp collectors have viewing pleasure too and SSTV amateurs captured the roughly 200x200 BW pixels which could be squeezed through a speach channel during 8 seconds and displayed on old radar tubes.

 

Seriously speaking I'd say digital photography started when consumers got access to and a use for it.

Crosby became involved in recording equipment after being introduced to wwII Vintage German Tape recording equipment. see this link.

http://www.ce.org/Press/CEA_Pubs/2048.asp

I actually took photography classes in Munich that used AKAI VIDEO equipment in 1971. This allowed students to "take a picture" and then the instructor could give instant feedback on the composition and arrangement. It worked well and saved all of the extended darkroom time and associated equipment.

if anyone is curious this is where i got all of this information from. and yes it was bing crosby from white christmas. inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bldigitalcamera.htm

>>>> Even though the information was stored in analog, it transmitted digitally. So is this the first digital camera.

 

Huh? The first digital camera? That's a leap... Would sending the results of a bunch of sliderule computations over the internet make a sliderule a digital computer?

 

Also a bit doubtful if the transmission format was actually digital (PAM, BPSK, QPSK, QAM, etc). Anyone have a citable reference?

>>> make a sliderule a digital computer?

 

Ooops. Should be: a digital calculator?