The First Digital Camera, Made in USA

boojum

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I have not seen this here and it has been floating around the internet for a while now. So there may be some folks who have not read this interesting article. A brand new technology, a new idea, a new way of doing things rejected by mossbacks at Kodak. and as a result of not embracing this technology and becoming a leader they lost out. Haloid paper made top quality museum grade photo paper but when they had the opportunity to develop copiers they jumped on it. Xerox. But not everybody in Rochester is smart. It is too easy to rely on ignorance to say, "This won't work" or "This is no good." After all, IBM couldn't see selling more than about a dozen computers. But they did catch on. It is better to keep an open mind.

https://petapixel.com/how-steve-sass...igital-camera/
 
Kodak knew there was a big market for digital, in the later 1980s was gearing up for big production of CCDs. Even then they were targeting $50 for a CCD for a consumer grade camera.
Kodak failed to switch over to CMOS.
Kodak had a lot of Divisions, of course film. When the bottom fell out of the film industry, they sold off the digital side Divisions. That was a mistake.
 
If you own a Leica M8 or M9, you hold Kodak technology in your hands. In fact, some of the earliest DSLRs aimed at professionals were Kodak products, beginning with the DCS100, based on Nikon's F3.

But the 1976 that I remember wasn't ready for digital photography. There was a sort of Cambrian Explosion of personal computers starting in the early 1980s, and they started to appear for sale in pharmacies and other unlikely venues, but I think a lot of USA households remained computer-free well into the 1990s.
 
Very interesting article. As an engineer with a number of patents I can tell you the inventor never, ever gets the credit. As first as the first digital cameras Nikon used Kodak digital cameras with the Nikon mount.
 
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