WEBVTT - The History of the Digital Camera 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.440 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:18.720 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts. And how the 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:23.239 tech are you? So? These days, just about everyone has 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:27.080 a digital camera on them pretty much all the time, right, 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:32.040 because smartphones have become all things to all people, digital camera, phone, computer, 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:36.080 media player, video game device, et cetera. And you know, 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.520 of course, there are folks out there who still use 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:44.080 standalone digital cameras. They're photographers, they're vloggers, their cinematographers, tons 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:46.559 of other folks. But it's interesting to me because young 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:50.480 people don't know a world that didn't have digital cameras. 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:53.319 For those of us of a certain age, we can 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:56.400 remember a time when digital cameras were really rare or 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:00.200 not even a thing at all. We remember using film cameras. Right. 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:02.320 You would take a photo and you would have no 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.240 idea how it came out until after you developed that 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:07.920 film somewhere, and that could be weeks or months or 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:11.520 even longer later. If you're like me, you might misplace 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:14.120 that canister of film. It might be years before you 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:16.440 see that picture, and then you'd say, oh, it was 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:19.600 out of focus. Now, like all inventions, it can actually 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.120 be tricky to figure out where to start. When we're 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.240 talking about digital cameras, which is what we're really focusing 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.200 on today. I wanted to think about where did we 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.040 come from with digital cameras, and I figure one good 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:35.199 place to start for digital cameras is eighteen thirty nine. 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.160 And yeah, that's pretty early. You're not going to find 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.720 a Fujifilm or a Canon or a Nikon camera in 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:45.800 eighteen thirty nine. In fact, you know when you figure 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:48.240 that the history of film traces itself back to around 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.400 eighteen sixteen, eighteen thirty nine is a pretty early date 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.360 for digital cameras. Really, what I want to talk about 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.920 is discovery that is key to digital cameras. The actual 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.520 photography part will come along much later. But it was 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:04.320 in eighteen thirty nine when a teenage smarty pants named 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:09.119 Edmund Beckerel created a peculiar device. He took an acidic 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:13.079 solution and he added silver chloride to it, and then 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:17.519 he connected electrodes that were made of platinum to this mixture, 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.480 and he exposed the whole thing to light, and he 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.240 observed that when light hit the solution there was a 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.960 change in voltage, an electrical current would flow through the electrodes. 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:33.040 He had discovered the photovoltaic effect, which is the effect 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:37.320 of certain materials that change light energy into electrical energy, 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.520 the same thing that's the basis for stuff like solar panels. 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.800 Right now, we're going to jump ahead more than a century, 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:49.160 but that discovery would be key for digital cameras. And 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:51.280 we can give a quick nod to folks at Bell 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:54.840 Laboratories in nineteen forty seven who use semiconductors to invent 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:59.720 the point contact transistor. Semiconductors that will remind you are 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:04.240 materials that under certain circumstances act as a conductor of 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:08.880 electricity and other circumstances act as an insulator. Well, we're 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:10.400 going to actually move all the way up to the 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:13.760 nineteen sixties and the golden age of the space race. 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.680 So one of the many brilliant people working on behalf 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.560 of the United States during the space Race was Eugene F. Lali. 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.600 He had been interested in photography ever since his childhood. 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:28.440 He even developed pund non intended, a method to reduce 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:31.160 red eye in color photos, when he was a teenager 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:34.280 using a Strobe light After he graduated college with a 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:36.680 degree in electrical engineering, he got a job working in 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:41.720 the aerospace industry and his focus, which again pund non intended, 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:47.160 was on interplanetary space exploration. He worked on proposals for 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.920 spacecraft design. He proposed features that would make it possible 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:55.480 for humans to journey to other planets or moons and such. Now, 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.600 one of the many challenges of space travel is navigation. 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:01.760 There are lots of challenge with space travel, for example, 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.560 keeping space from killing you, but navigation is definitely one 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:07.920 of them, and just knowing where you are in relation 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:10.560 to everything else can be a bit of a challenge. 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.160 There aren't many landmarks out in space, and the road 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.160 signage is absolutely terrible. So Llli proposed a system that 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:22.240 would analyze light from celestial bodies to determine where spacecraft 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:26.599 was relative to everything else, essentially saying, oh, I recognize 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:30.320 this configuration and based upon the positioning that means you 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:33.120 have to be here. You can think of it almost 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:35.520 like a star map. And he put together a scientific 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:38.520 paper on the subject, and he titled it Mosaic Guidance 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.640 for Interplanetary Travel, and he presented his work at the 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:45.680 nineteen sixty one convention of the American Rocket Society. Now, 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:50.440 Lali's proposal was to create a special kind of ship, 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:56.760 a mosaic of photo detectors or photodiodes or photo sites, 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:58.479 you can think of it as any of those terms. 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:01.919 So these would collect light, they would then convert that 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:05.000 light to an electrical current, and then a computer system 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:07.479 would analyze the current coming from all these different photo 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.880 detectors to make sense of it all. And essentially Lolly 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:13.480 was describing a type of photosensor that you would find 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.679 in digital cameras. Now, his idea was ahead of its time. 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.039 It was solid as far as the concept goes, but 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:23.479 it would take several years before anyone was ready to 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.039 try and make something similar to what he described in 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:30.000 his paper. But it was absolutely on point. In fact, 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:31.880 it would take a little more than a decade before 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:35.480 someone else built upon Lolly's idea as far as digital 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:40.039 cameras are concerned. An engineer with Texas Instruments named Willis 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:42.880 Adcock filed a patent in nineteen seventy two for a 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.920 filmless camera, or, as the patent called it, an quote 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:51.839 electronic photography system end quote. Now. Adcock's patent described the 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:56.400 invention as again quote, a completely electronic system for recording 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:01.520 and subsequently displaying still life pictures include an optical electronic 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:07.640 transducer for generating electronic signals responsive to an optical image. Now, 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.200 in case you're not familiar with the term transducer, this 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:12.760 refers to any sort of device that converts one form 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.479 of energy to a different form of energy, So in 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:19.960 this case, the device would convert light energy into electrical energy. Now, 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:22.880 keep in mind the nineteen seventy two pre dates the 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.440 era of personal computers, so Adcock's description of his invention 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:31.039 references television sets as the display system for his invention. 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:35.400 He explains in the patent that the electronic photographic device 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:38.920 would sidestep the need for film, which also means there's 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.640 no need to develop whatever medium you're using to capture 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.680 the image. In this case, you know it's electrical currents, 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:50.480 not a physical film. Adcock puts forward that this would 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:53.560 mean his invention would be less expensive and more efficient 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:57.440 than film cameras, which is hard to argue. Right though, 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:59.080 it is a bit odd to think of just using 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:02.640 your television set to view your photos. So Adcock's version 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:05.680 also didn't make it to the consumer market. But folks 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.000 around this time started to experiment with early test designs 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.960 for digital cameras, and one such person was Steve Sassin. 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.160 He had joined Eastman Kodak as an engineer in nineteen 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:20.240 seventy three and put together a prototype digital camera. So 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:23.640 the sensor he used fell into the category of CCD, 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.440 which stands for charge coupled device. These were first invented 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:31.000 back in nineteen sixty nine, and it's the CCD's job 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:33.800 to capture light, to convert that light to an electrical charge, 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:36.520 and to send that as data to the camera's processor. 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:38.800 But it actually has to go through a few more steps. 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.120 Has to go through an analog to digital converter first, 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.840 because electrical charge is an analog signal, right, It's continuous, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.520 it's not made up of binary steps. So you have 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:52.600 to convert that analog signal to a digital one in 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.680 order to process it with a computer processor. It does 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:57.920 get way more complicated than why I just described, but 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.120 you get the general idea. Now. The way CCD works 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:05.520 is that the charge created by the chip depends entirely 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:08.240 on the intensity of light that's hitting a specific part 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.480 of the CCD. So the order of operations is that 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:14.120 when you push the button on a camera in order 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.280 to take an image, a shutter opens up for a moment. Now, 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.800 the shutter otherwise blocks light coming in from the optics 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.840 of the camera the lenses that are designed to focus 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.640 light so that it hits the CCD when the shutter 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:30.640 is open, So light comes in, it's focused by the lenses, 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:33.680 it's passed through the gap created by the shutter opening. 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:35.880 This is also known as the aperture. By the way, 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.640 you can actually set the aperture to different values in 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:42.600 order to allow more or less light through. So the aperture, 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.120 along with the shutter speed, will adjust the exposure of 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:49.360 your image and then the light will hit the CCD. 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.720 So a CCD, if you were to get a microscope 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:54.199 out and take a look at it, it would look like 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:57.440 a little grid of squares, and each square in that 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:01.720 grid is a photovoltaic component that can transform light energy 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:04.959 into an electrical current. It is a photo site or photodiode. 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:08.840 One thing I didn't know about CCDs before this episode 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:12.000 is how they are wired, or rather how they aren't 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:15.280 wired in a way. So you might think, as I did, 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:20.280 that each individual square is wired to transfer the electrical 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:24.640 current it generates to a processor, you know, through a pathway. 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.000 But that's not the case. And the reason for that 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.760 is because if you did do it that way, you 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.920 would potentially ruin the image you were trying to take. 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:38.560 And this is because of leakage, that is electrical leakage. 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:43.560 So the densely packed tiny wires would leak electrical charge 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:45.840 and your finalized image would have flaws in it, like 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:49.120 streaks or striations. Now I wasn't familiar with that issue, 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:51.800 so big thanks to an eleven year old YouTube video 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.600 from engineer Guy for pointing it out. Now, interestingly, this 0:09:55.840 --> 0:10:00.480 does contrast it with a different kind of image sensor, 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:03.160 which actually predates the CCD, But we'll get to that. 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:08.760 So if you're not wiring these individual squares so that 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.760 they each go to a processor, how does this work? 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:16.000 How can a CCD transfer charge so that it can 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.880 be processed well? As engineer Guy explains, a CCD is 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:23.440 made of silicon, and in the manufacturing process, engineers add 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.240 insulating sections to divide up the silicon into rows. So 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:32.240 you have these dividing lines that separate each row from 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:36.480 one another, and because it's insulated, the charge cannot pass 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:41.680 across this gap. Now, to create columns, engineers would add 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:46.680 strips of metal, typically aluminum, so each square is insulated 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:50.280 from its neighbors in channel stops. That's what's called And 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:54.360 when light hits this array of squares or photo sites, 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.680 each of these squares builds up an electrical charge relative 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:01.400 to the intensity of light that hit it. So if 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:03.680 one square was hit with more intense light, it's going 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.680 to have a different charge than that one that just 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.880 got a tiny bit of light. But collectively, all of 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:14.040 these squares capture an image in the form of an 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.040 electrical charge at this point. But to transfer that charge 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:20.280 and turn it into data, the CCD shifts the image 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.559 across the strips of alumnum or whatever other metal might 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:25.840 have been used. So it's kind of like the image 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:30.360 is moving row by row across the CCD To transfer 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.280 to the camera's memory. You get a row of charges 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:37.600 that gets transferred through an analog to digital converter and 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:40.120 goes to the processor, and the next row moves in, 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:44.240 so it's like bottom row is gone, next row comes down. 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:47.439 Sort of thing, not necessarily bottom, but you get the idea. 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:49.920 But it reminds me of how in the bad old 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:51.920 days of dial up internet, you would go to a 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:54.520 web page and if it had images on it, you 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.360 would watch as the image would load one row of 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:00.000 pixels at a time. It's kind of like that, except 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.120 in this case we're talking about shifting charges off a 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:06.480 grid of photosites and into memory one row at a time. Also, 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:10.200 the electrical signal again passes through an amplifier, so it's 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:12.600 an analog. It goes through an amplifier than an analog 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:14.960 to digital converter, and this is in order to have 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:18.199 a signal strong enough to be able to actually scan. Now, 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:21.880 remember a pixel is a point of light, so each 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:26.480 of these photosites is corresponding to a pixel in the image. 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.320 So a digital image consists of lots of these little 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:33.440 points of light, and collectively they represent the overall picture. 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.880 The more densely packed you have pixels of light, and 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:41.800 the more pixels that are there, generally speaking, the smoother 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.920 the picture is. If you have fewer pixels, it's going 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:47.480 to be a clunky picture. And I always describe this 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:50.559 as imagine you've got a collection of wooden blocks and 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:53.959 they're of different colors, and you're instructed to make an 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.080 image of a let's say it's a flower using these 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:01.400 wooden blocks. And let's say that the woodenlo are you know, 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:05.280 an inch to a side, and you've got you know, 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:07.520 enough to be able to make a picture, well an 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:09.000 inch to a side, it's probably going to be a 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:15.520 pretty clunky looking flower, unless you're building so that you're 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.640 taking an image from like twenty stories up or something. 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.240 So then let's say that you were given blocks that 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:24.360 were half an inch to a side, and you've got 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:27.280 more blocks now to build an image of a flower. Well, 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:28.960 that flower is probably going to look a little less 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:31.960 blocky than the first one, let's say a quarter inch 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:33.720 to a side, and so on and so on. As 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.320 the pixels get smaller and you're able to pack them 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:40.640 more densely together, the resulting image you get is of 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:43.880 a higher resolution. In order to make that happen, these 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:47.040 CCDs have to have a grid of photo sites that 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:51.240 are corresponding to all those pixels, so keep that in mind. 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:53.520 By the way, the CCD, like I said, is not 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.120 the only type of sensor for digital photography. The other 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:00.400 major type is called a complementary metal oxide semiconduct And 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.320 in this context, complementary doesn't mean the sensor says, hey, 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:06.480 you're looking sharp. Let's take a photo. The initialism for 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:11.400 this phrase is ce moss CMOS, and when we come 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:15.520 back we'll talk more about how a sea moss works 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:20.360 and how it is fundamentally different from CCD. We'll also 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:25.480 mention again that SEAMS predates CCD. But before we get 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:27.640 into all that, let's take a quick break to think 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:39.440 our sponsors. Okay, we're back and we're going to talk 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.920 about ce MOS. So, like a CCD, a SEAMS sensor 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.560 converts you know, photons of light into an electrical charge, 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:51.200 But unlike a CCD, each photodiode or pixel in a 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:55.000 sea moss sensor has its own amplifier, so these are 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.560 individually wired, whereas CCDs aren't. So rather than scanning the 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.160 charge just one row at a time, a SEAMAS sensor 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:05.720 sends an amplified signal from each photo site to an 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:09.240 analog to digital converter. Now this means that SEMAS sensors 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:14.160 create more noise than CCD sensors visual noise right, That 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.320 means you can get some artifacts due to electrical leakage. 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.960 Even so, SEMAS sensors are really prominent in embedded vision 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.600 applications in fact, they've overtaken CCDs. Now. One reason for 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:28.440 that is that SEMAS sensors draw less power than CCDs, 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.680 so you can extend battery life for example, which is 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:34.600 you know, that's a big deal, or you can make 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.160 it a smaller battery. Either way, right, you can either say, well, 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:39.960 i can use a smaller battery because I'm not drawing 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:42.880 as much power, so I can have just as much charge, 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:45.400 but I can reduce the weight of the overall unit. 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:47.360 If we're talking about a headset, that's a big deal, 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:49.240 right if you're going to be wearing that for hours. 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.120 Or conversely, you could say, well, we're going to keep 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:54.280 the battery the same size, but now we'll be able 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:56.920 to power the device longer than we could if we 0:15:56.920 --> 0:15:59.920 were to use a CCD sensor. SEMAS sensors are also 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:03.280 far less expensive than CCDs, so that make them makes 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:05.400 them a really attractive option when you're trying to keep 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.440 product prices under control, unless you're Apple, in which case 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:10.280 you just crank that number up as high or even 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.920 higher than the market will allow. Anyway, for the early 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.440 days of digital cameras, CCDs were really where it was at. 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.760 It would take years of work to mitigate the issues 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.640 with noise reduction in seams technology for those sensors to 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.640 really catch up and then take the lead. So a 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:28.320 lot of the rest of this episode is really going 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.240 to be about devices that used CCD sensors. Just know 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:36.960 that eventually Sea Moss took their place. Now back to Sassin, 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:39.960 right if you forgot. He's the guy I talked about 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:42.280 before the break. He's the one who built an early 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:48.800 prototype digital camera. So his boss, Gareth Lloyd, had suspected 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.520 that the charge coupled device or CCD might make a 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:55.560 practical use in photography, so he gave Sassin a dream assignment. 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:57.920 He said, you know, see what you can do with 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:00.160 this thing. See if you can make something out of it. 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.880 Because Sassin had a background in electrical engineering, and while 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:06.240 he was working for Kodak, people were worried that he 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:10.640 would get into trouble because he was apparently very curious 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.360 kind of guy, as in curious as in how does 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:16.880 this work? Not man? That guy is weird. So Sassin 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:20.840 has said that hardly anyone knew about his project, but 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.679 it wasn't because it was some sort of top secret project. Instead, 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:27.320 it was seen in such a small operation that no 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.720 one really knew it was going on, just you know. 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:34.359 Was also not a straight path from assignment to complete 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:36.800 a project. He said it was a lot of learning 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:39.040 and a lot of mistakes along the way, and that 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:42.399 often he questioned the wisdom of agreeing to do the 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.919 project in the first place. But in December nineteen seventy 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.399 five he had himself a prototype and his camera was 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.680 a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, so he had salvaged 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.640 a lens from a Super eight film camera. The circuitry 0:17:57.000 --> 0:18:01.000 mixed analog and digital elements, or he had to include 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.720 an analog digital converter in this as well. The CCD 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:08.000 array was also part of this. Obviously, there was more 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:10.960 than a dozen nickel cadmium batteries to power the thing, 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:15.000 and it weighed nearly nine pounds, pretty hefty for a 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:17.000 digital camera. You would not want to carry one of 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:21.639 those around on casual outings. It had no mechanical shutter. 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:25.119 Assassin did incorporate an electronic shutter with a shutter speed 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:27.720 of one twentieth of a second, and he discovered that 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.280 the CCD was sensitive to infrared light and that this 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:35.520 would sometimes cause issues when he was taking images indoors, 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.679 so he also added an infrared filter to block IR out. 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:42.920 As for memory, while he decided to go straight to storage, 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:46.359 he used a tape assembly as in magnetic tape, so 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:49.920 it worked on a principle similar to audio cassettes or 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:54.080 VHS tapes or cam quarters old tape based camquarders. There 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:56.720 are pictures of this prototype online. You should check it 0:18:56.720 --> 0:18:59.680 out if you are curious, because it really does look 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:03.719 like of Frankenstein's monster. It is an odd collection of parts. 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.359 The digital camera could capture images at a resolution of 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:10.280 one hundred pixels by one hundred pixels, so in my 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:13.000 example of using wooden blocks, it would be as if 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:17.280 you had, you know, ten thousand blocks in order to 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.399 make a picture, and it could be one hundred blocks 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:23.439 per side. So yeah, the full image would be approximately 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.520 ten thousand pixels. Much later we would talk about digital 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:30.320 camera resolution in terms of megapixels or millions of pixels. 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:32.919 So ten thousand pixels is a far cry from what 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:35.760 we would see with consumer digital cameras or the kind 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:37.960 that's even in your phone. But you know, it was 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:40.919 a start, and we'll get back to megapixels. As it 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.440 turns out when you hear a camera has a fifteen 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:47.520 megapixel sensor in it or whatever. That doesn't necessarily mean 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:49.600 that all those pixels are going to end up in 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.359 the final image. But we'll get back to that. So 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.440 Sassin showed off his work to his colleagues over at Kodak, 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.639 and he took photos with this very weird camera and 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:00.919 then he popped the tape out of the camera and 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:03.600 inserted it into a playback device that was connected to 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.680 a television, so again similar to something like a VCR. 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.480 He showed how the images would display on the TV 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.879 screen and his peers they thought it was interesting, but 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:15.320 they didn't really see a practical application. I mean, who 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:17.280 the heck would want to look at their photos on 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:21.000 their television? To them, it seemed impractical and unrealistic. Keep 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.000 in mind, this is still really before personal computers had 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:28.040 taken off, so Assassin's work was largely dismissed. It's also 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:31.560 worth pointing out that Kodak was very much in the 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:35.119 film business, so not only did film seem to be 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:37.640 the winning strategy at the time, it was the crux 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:41.919 of their entire enterprise. The company had an incentive to 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:47.480 dismiss digital photography because digital photography doesn't need film or 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:51.000 processing or development. You don't need any of that. It's 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:54.960 all the stuff that was the foundation of Kodak's business. 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.120 So you could argue that Kodak partly ignored digital photography 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:03.119 because it it was really inconvenient to its established business strategy. 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.439 I've heard similar arguments made against certain car companies and 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:11.560 their slow move to develop fully electric vehicles that because 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:16.000 that was inconvenient to their business strategy, they purposefully ignored 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:20.400 it and then got left behind. Anyway, while Sassin's invention 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:23.320 was neat, it was really ahead of its time. I mean, 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.120 in nineteen seventy five, we're just getting into the very 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:28.880 earliest days of personal computers, for goodness sakes, and at 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:34.400 that time really only nerdy hobbyists were into PCs. While 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.840 Kodak arguably made a big old whoopsie by not pursuing 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.800 digital photography earlier, you can hardly blame the company for 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:43.159 not embracing a tech that just didn't really have a 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:46.680 place in the industry just yet. Sassin would still work 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:49.320 on R and D with digital cameras, as did other 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.520 engineers around the world. One problem that needed solving was 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:56.000 how to capture color because the CCD could convert light 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:58.840 to electrical current, but there was no information about color 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.000 in that signal, so you would end up with a 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:04.199 black and white photograph. To get color, you would need 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:07.639 to add a filter of some sort and then program 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:12.800 a processor to interpret the charges coming through in order 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:16.800 to add color to the final image. So typically you 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:20.399 would do this with a mosaic of filters, and you 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.560 would have rows that often would alternate red and green 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:26.720 squares at the top row, and then the next row 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:28.800 would be blue and green squares, and then back to 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:31.200 red and green and so on, and so you would 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:34.200 just have this grid of little squares alternating between these colors, 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.160 and each filter would block light of its corresponding color 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:40.800 from passing through, so only light from other colors would 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:43.840 make it through that filter. So a blue filter blocks 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:46.800 blue light and a green filter blocks green light, et cetera. 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:49.720 Now this affects the intensity of the light that actually 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:53.560 reaches the CCD, and thus it affects the electrical charge. 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:56.280 As I said, you have to program the processor to 0:22:56.320 --> 0:22:59.199