Digital Imaging - History

History

Digital imaging was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, largely to avoid the operational weaknesses of film cameras, for scientific and military missions including the KH-11 program. As digital technology became cheaper in later decades it replaced the old film methods for many purposes.

The first digital image was produced in 1920, by the Bartlane cable picture transmission system. British inventors, Harry G. Bartholomew and Maynard D. McFarlane, developed this method. The process consisted of “a series of negatives on zinc places that were exposed for varying lengths of time, thus producing varying densities,”. In 1927, Philo T. Farnsworth established the first electronic television. This television used an electronic scanning tube as well as a cathode ray tube that could administer and display different images. In 1957, Russell Kirsch produced a device that generated digital data that could be stored in a computer; this was made possible by his use of a drum scanner and photomultiplier tube.

These different types of scanning ideas were the basis of the first designs of the digital camera. The first cameras took a long time to capture an image and were not ideal for consumer purposes. It wasn’t until the development of the CCD (charge-coupled device) that the digital camera really took off. The CCD became part of the imaging systems used in telescopes, the first black and white digital cameras and video recorders in the 1980s. Color was eventually added to the CCD and is the basis of color that exists in cameras that we use today.