Russell A. Kirsch (June 20, 1929 – August 11, 2020) was an American engineer at the National Bureau of Standards (now known as the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into Outline of p ...

). He was recognized as the developer of the first digital

image scanner An image scanner (often abbreviated to just scanner) is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object and converts it to a digital image. The most common type of scanner used in the home and the office is the flatbe ...

, and subsequently scanned the world's first digital photograph – an image of his infant son.

Early life

Kirsch was born in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

on June 20, 1929. His parents were Jewish emigrants from

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

and

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. He attended the

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science is a State school, public Specialized high schools in New York City, specialized high school in the Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science ...

, graduating in 1946. He continued his education at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

in 1950,

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1952, and later the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

Career

In 1951 Kirsch joined the National Bureau of Standards as part of the team that ran SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer). SEAC was the U.S.'s first

stored-program computer A stored-program computer is a computer that stores program instructions in electronically, electromagnetically, or optically accessible memory. This contrasts with systems that stored the program instructions with plugboards or similar mechani ...

to become operational, having entered service in 1950. In 1957, Kirsch's group developed a digital

, to "trace variations of intensity over the surfaces of photographs", and made the first digital scans. One of the first photographs scanned, a picture of Kirsch's three-month-old son, was captured as just 30,976

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

s,Kirsch, R. A., et. al (December, 1957)
"Experiments in Processing Pictorial Information with a Digital Computer"
',''

, archived fro
the original
on December 21, 2016 a 176 × 176 array, in an area 5 cm × 5 cm (2" x 2"). The bit depth was only one bit per pixel, stark black and white with no intermediate shades of gray, but, by combining several scans made using different scanning thresholds,

grayscale In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample (signal), s ...

information could also be acquired. They used the computer to extract line drawings, count objects, recognize alphanumeric characters, and produce

oscilloscope An oscilloscope (formerly known as an oscillograph, informally scope or O-scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying voltages of one or more signals as a function of time. Their main purpose is capturing i ...

displays. He also proposed the Kirsch operator for edge detection in images. Later in life, Kirsch became the director of research of the Sturvil Corporation and an advisory editor for the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

(IEEE). He was the advisory editor of the journal ''Languages of Design''.

Personal life

Kirsch was married to Joan (née Levin) Kirsch for 65 years until his death. Together, they had four children: Walden, Peter, Lindsey, and Kara. Kirsch spent most of his professional life in Washington, D.C., where he was affiliated with the

National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sc ...

for nearly 50 years. He moved to

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

, in 2001 after his retirement.

Death

Kirsch died on August 11, 2020, at his home in Portland at age 91. According to his son Walden, Kirsch's cause of death was

frontotemporal dementia Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), also called frontotemporal degeneration disease or frontotemporal neurocognitive disorder, encompasses several types of dementia involving the progressive degeneration of the brain's frontal lobe, frontal and tempor ...

, a form of

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include problems wit ...

Accomplishments

In 2003 Kirsch's scanned picture of his son was named by ''Life'' magazine one of the "100 Photographs That Changed the World" due to its importance in the development of

digital photography Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image is ...

. The original image is in the Portland Art Museum. Although Kirsch did not work for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, his invention led to technology crucial to

space exploration Space exploration is the process of utilizing astronomy and space technology to investigate outer space. While the exploration of space is currently carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, its physical exploration is conducted bo ...

, including the Apollo Moon landing. Medical advancements such as Sir Godfrey Hounsfield’s CAT scan can also be attributed to Kirsch's research.

References

External links

Kirsch talking about the SEAC computer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirsch, Russell 1929 births 2020 deaths American computer scientists Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni The Bronx High School of Science alumni Scientists from New York (state) American people of Russian-Jewish descent American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Jewish American scientists 21st-century American Jews