How a 24-year-old Kodak engineer sparked the digital camera revolution
In 1975, 24-year-old Steve Sasson of Kodak built the first handheld digital camera, an eight-pound device that used a CCD, a Super 8 lens, a cassette for storage, and produced a 0.01-megapixel black-and-white image. The prototype—shown to Kodak executives on a TV—helped launch the shift from film to digital photography, despite initial skepticism that photos would ever be viewed on a screen; Sasson later led patents at Kodak before retiring after 35 years.