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Steven J. Sasson (born July 4, 1950) is an American
electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the ...
and the inventor of the ''self-contained'' (portable)
digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
. Sasson is a 1972 (BS) and 1973 (MS) graduate of
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...
in
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
. He attended and graduated from
Brooklyn Technical High School Brooklyn Technical High School, commonly called Brooklyn Tech and administratively designated High School 430, is an elite public high school in New York City that specializes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It is one of th ...
. He has worked for
Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
since shortly after his graduation from engineering school.


First self-contained digital camera

Steven Sasson invented the self-contained digital camera at Kodak in 1975.History of the digital camera and digital imaging
Digital Camera Museum
It weighed and had only 100 × 100 resolution (0.01
megapixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the sma ...
s). The image was recorded onto a
cassette tape The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Otten ...
and this process took 23 seconds. His camera took images in
black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
. As he set out on his design project, what he envisioned for the future was a camera without mechanical moving parts (although his device did have moving parts, such as the tape drive). Sasson's patent claimed an arrangement that allowed the CCD to be read out quickly ("in real time") into a temporary buffer of
random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost the s ...
, and then written to storage at the lower speed of the storage device; Patent – Electronic Still camera essentially all modern digital cameras still use such an arrangement. His was not the first camera that produced digital images, but was the first hand-held digital camera. Earlier examples of digital cameras included some cameras used for satellite photography, experimental devices by Michael Francis Tompsett ''et al.'', and the commercial product and hobbyist camera called the
Cromemco Cyclops The Cromemco Cyclops, introduced in 1975 by Cromemco, was the first commercial all-digital camera using a digital metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) image sensor. It was also the first digital camera to be interfaced to a microcomputer. The dig ...
.


Life and career

Sasson was born in
Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, beh ...
, the son of Ragnhild Tomine (Endresen) and John Vincent Sasson. His mother was Norwegian. His invention began in 1975 with a broad assignment from his supervisor at
Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
Company, Gareth A. Lloyd: to attempt to build an electronic camera using a
charge coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD). The resulting camera invention was awarded the U.S. patent number 4,131,919. Sasson continues to work for the Eastman Kodak Company, now working in an
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, c ...
protection role. Sasson joined the
University of South Florida The University of South Florida (USF) is a public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, and other campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. It is one of 12 members of the State University System of Florida. USF is h ...
Institute for Advanced Discovery & Innovation in 2018, where he is a member and courtesy professor. On November 17, 2009,
U.S. President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
awarded Sasson the
National Medal of Technology and Innovation The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...
at a ceremony in the
East Room The East Room is an event and reception room in the Executive Residence, which is a building of the White House complex, the home of the president of the United States. The East Room is the largest room in the Executive Residence; it is used for ...
of the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800 ...
. This is the highest honor awarded by the US government to scientists, engineers, and inventors. On September 6, 2012 The
Royal Photographic Society The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, commonly known as the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), is one of the world's oldest photographic societies. It was founded in London, England, in 1853 as the Photographic Society of London with ...
awarded Sasson its Progress Medal and Honorary Fellowship "in recognition of any invention, research, publication or other contribution that has resulted in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense."
Leica Camera AG Leica Camera AG () is a German company that manufactures cameras, optical lenses, photographic lenses, binoculars, rifle scopes and microscopes. The company was founded by Ernst Leitz in 1869 (Ernst Leitz Wetzlar), in Wetzlar, Germany. I ...
honored Sasson by presenting to him a limited edition 18-megapixel Leica M9 Titanium camera at the
Photokina 2010 Photokina (rendered in the promoters' branding as "photokina") is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, ...
trade show event. Sasson was inducted into the
National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also ope ...
in 2011 , and later elected as a Fellow of the
National Academy of Inventors The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) is a US non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging inventors in academia, following the model of the National Academies of the United States. It was founded at the University of South Florida T ...
in 2018.


Patents

* Patent – Electronic Still camera


References


External links


The Dawn of Digital Photography
- interview with Steven Sasson on the invention of the digital camera
Disruptive Innovation: The Story of the First Digital Camera
lecture by Steven Sasson at the
Linda Hall Library The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, sitting "majestically on a urban arboretum." It is the "largest independently funded public library of scien ...
(October 26, 2011) {{DEFAULTSORT:Sasson, Steven 1950 births Living people 20th-century American inventors 21st-century American inventors Digital photography Kodak people People from Brooklyn American electrical engineers Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Brooklyn Technical High School alumni American people of Norwegian descent Engineers from New York (state)