Digital photography started with NASA

HAPPY snappers can thank NASA for the digital camera.

In 1961 NASA engineer Eugene Lally had a eureka moment that shaped the future of photography.

His idea was to give astronauts a new type of camera to photograph stars and planets. Pictures sent back to Earth would give those tracking the mission the astronauts’ location.

Before the year ended, Mr Lally came up with a document called Mosaic Guidance for Interplanetary Travel, a blueprint for the world’s first digital camera.

Sadly the technology to back Mr Lally’s plans was not available.

But 14 years later the idea became a reality as Kodak engineer Steve Sasson salvaged bits and pieces of camera parts from Kodak’s Super 8 camera assembly line and created the world’s first digital camera.

Compared with today’s sleek, high-resolution compact digital cameras, Mr Sasson’s was primitive and impractical.

His prototype recorded a low-resolution, black and white image of 100 lines on to a cassette tape. And it required a micro computer to see the image on a TV screen.

Even so, Mr Sasson’s crude device inspired MegaVision, a small private company, to design the world’s first commercial digital camera in 1987. Less than a year later the Japanese developed and released the world’s first consumer digital camera.

Fuji’s DS-1P digital camera was a revelation and a photographic revolution in 1988. Compared with the Sasson or MegaVision cameras, Fuji’s was portable, had a built-in battery and stored images on a removable flash card.

The only thing that prevented a DS-1P from being a required camera in every home was the price – a steep $US10,000 ($12,286) for the no-frills entry level model and a heady $US40,000 ( $49,146) for the top-of-the-range version.

In 2001 Sharp designed the world’s first commercial camera phone, the J-SH04.

Thanks to Eugene Lally, hundreds of millions of people are today making the transition from film to digital cameras.