To try and get the conversation started, regarding digital solutions, I came up with what I thought would be a way to shortcut development of a completely new digital camera. The Kodak 8mm camcorder recorded digital data, so the video recorder could also be a digital image storage device, it would be kinda slow, but it would work. I thought creating a back for a Hasselblad would provide enough room for the megapixel sensor, electronics and DTR (digital tape recorder). At the time I didn't realize how small the actual sensor was, so it would have been a stretch on a medium format camera. Kodak did finally did release a digital camera back for the Hasselblad about 10 years later with a larger sensor.
At the time, I was not aware that Steve Sasson had invented a similar solution ten years earlier. It never came up in our many conversations during the five years we worked together. I wouldn't discover this fact until a few years after I left the division. Steve was one of my biggest supporters within the division. I wrote numerous white papers both individually and with his input, and he would add his name as co-author to many I wrote That lent greater weight to my proposals having his and several other key engineers' support. Steve's invention was ahead of it's time. It took the PC market 10 years to catch up and make that type of capture device feasible. Kodak had discouraged him from talking about his digital camera invention to anyone.
The drawing below was created with the latest drawing tool at the time, Apple's MacDraw. The first vector based application for the Mac. Vector drawings use math to describe objects rather than pixels. This means vector drawings can be enlarged infinitely without loss of resolution. |
