10,000 Pixel Resolution: The First Digital Handheld Camera Was Built 50 Years Ago
[10:41 Sat,27.December 2025 by blip]
The first digital camera was built at Eastman Kodak in 1975—half as a joke and long before the time was right for it. It weighed about three and a half kilograms and stored rudimentary photos with 100x100 pixels on an audio cassette. A write operation took about 23 seconds.
Steve Sasson with his camera, (c) Eastman Kodak Company
The fact that this camera originated at Kodak, a giant of analog photographic technology that later ran into massive problems in the digital age, seems like a harsh irony of fate today. It was constructed at the time by Steve Sasson, who had just started at Kodak as a young electrical engineer. The Star Trek fan was annoyed by the cumbersome, chemical procedure of photo development, and so he wondered if it wouldn't be possible to capture and store an image electronically as well.
In fact, researchers at Bell Labs had developed integrated circuits in the form of a CCD (charge-coupled device) a few years earlier, which was then distributed by Fairchild. Sasson happened upon such a CCD, and it became the somewhat temperamental centerpiece of the camera. Various voltages had to be applied in the exact right amount and sequence to convert light into electrical charge without too much noise.
Like a Toaster with a Lens
However, the electrical impulses also had to be converted into a digital image signal, and this, in turn, had to be stored somehow. Optics and a power supply were needed—all more or less major challenges that Sasson mastered single-handedly, often with "borrowed" components.
Not least, there was also the question of how one would even view a captured image—a playback method also had to be invented. With the help of a brand-new Motorola microprocessor that Sasson managed to get from Kodak, the 10,000-pixel digital image code was converted into an (analog) NTSC television signal with 400 scan lines.
By December 1975, all the fundamental problems were solved, and Sasson began demonstrating the first completely digital camera internally at Kodak. His demos met with great interest, but also just as much incomprehension from management—why would anyone prefer to take bad photos with a large and expensive box camera like this when there were cheap compact cameras available? Apart from isolated pocket calculators, there were practically no digital consumer devices yet; imagination was insufficient to recognize the full potential of the development.
Since Kodak made its money from analog photographic technology, it was naturally particularly resistant to the new possibilities. Nevertheless, Sasson's development was patented, which later brought the company attractive licensing revenues. The first Kodak digital camera came onto the market in 1995.
The description in the patent application is quite curious, by the way—since there was no suitable vocabulary for the new digital technology yet, it states: "A high speed analog-to-digital converter converts these pulses to multi-bit digital words in real time."
On the occasion of the anniversary, the BBC recently published a charming interview with Sasson, from which our information here is sourced—those interested in the history of technology will find the full story of the camera's creation there.
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