Steven sasson invention
Steven Sasson
American electrical engineer and inventor of the portable digital camera
Steven J. Sasson (born July 4, ) is an American electrical engineer and the inventor of the self-contained (portable) digital camera. He joined Kodak shortly after his graduation from engineering school and retired from Kodak in [1]
Early life and education
Sasson was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ragnhild Tomine (Endresen) and John Vincent Sasson.
His mother was Norwegian.[2]
He attended and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School.[3] He is a (BS) and (MS) graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in electrical engineering.[1]
First self-contained digital camera
Steven Sasson developed a portable, battery operated, self-contained digital camera at Kodak in [4] It weighed 8 pounds (&#;kg) and used a Fairchild CCD image sensor having only &#;×&#; pixels ( megapixels).
The images were digitally recorded onto a cassette tape, a process that took twenty-three seconds per image. His camera took images in black and white. As he set out on his design project, he envisioned a camera without mechanical moving parts (although his device did have moving parts, such as the tape drive).[5]
In , Kodak filed a patent application on some features of Sasson's prototype camera.
Titled "electronic still camera", the patent listed Sasson and Gareth Lloyd as co-inventors. The issued patent, U.S. patent number 4,,,[6] claims an arrangement that allows the CCD to be read out quickly ("in real time") into a temporary buffer of random-access memory and then written to storage at the lower speed of the storage device.
Steven sasson biography wife
Steve Sasson invented the digital camera, changing the future of photography and transforming an industry. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Sasson always was drawn to exploring electronics. At age 13, he built an amateur radio and inadvertently sent a signal on a banned frequency, prompting a warning from the Federal Communications Commission and illustrating his early propensity to take risks. Also in , he took a position at a research laboratory at the Eastman Kodak Co. In , Kodak supervisor Gareth Lloyd tasked Sasson with investigating whether the recently created charged-coupled device CCD — a mechanism that captures light and transfers it into usable data — could be used to produce an image sensor for a camera.Most modern digital cameras still use such an arrangement, which had been described in an earlier MIT patent[7] that employed a vidicon sensor rather than a CCD.
His prototype was not the first camera that produced digital images, but it was the first hand-held digital camera.[4] Earlier examples of digital cameras included the Multi Spectral Scanner on Landsat 1;[8] which took digital photographs of Yosemite before it was launched in ; cameras used for astronomical photography;[9] experimental devices by Michael Francis Tompsettet al.; and the commercial product and hobbyist camera called the Cromemco Cyclops.[citation needed]
Life and career
His work on digital cameras began in with a broad assignment from his supervisor at Eastman Kodak Company, Gareth A.
Lloyd: to attempt to build an electronic camera using a commercially available charge-coupled device (CCD).[10] The resulting camera invention was awarded the U.S. patent number 4,,[6]
Sasson retired from Eastman Kodak Company in and began working as a consultant in an intellectual property protection role.[10] Sasson joined the University of South Florida Institute for Advanced Discovery & Innovation in , where he is a member and courtesy professor.[11]
On November 17, , U.S.
PresidentBarack Obama awarded Sasson the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.[12] This is the highest honor awarded by the US government to scientists, engineers, and inventors.[13] On September 6, The Royal Photographic Society 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."[14]Leica Camera AG honored Sasson by presenting to him one of its cameras at the Photokina trade show event.[15] Sasson was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in , and later elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in [16]
Patents
References
- ^ ab"The Rediff Interview/Steven J Sasson, inventor of the digital camera".
India Limited. August 7, Retrieved 22 September
- ^"Sydvesten: LOKAL- OG SLEKTSHISTORISK MAGASIN FOR ROGALAND" [Southwesterly: LOCAL AND BREAK HISTORICAL MAGAZINE FOR ROGALAND] (PDF). p.&#; Archived from the original(PDF) on Retrieved
- ^"Alumni Hall of Fame".Steven sasson biography As a child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he was immediately drawn to electronics and was never one to shy away from exploring new technologies. His innate passion and tenacity are illustrated in this story from his early years. After building an amateur radio at age 13 he accidentally sent out a signal on a banned frequency and received a letter from the Federal Communications Commission FCC. Right out of graduate school, he landed a job working at a research laboratory at the Eastman Kodak Company and was amazed that he had found a job doing what he enjoyed most of all: tinkering with electronics. It was just a project to keep me from getting into trouble doing something else, I guess.
.
- ^ abHistory of the digital camera and digital imagingArchived at the Wayback Machine, Digital Camera Museum
- ^Estrin, James (August 12, ). "Kodak's First Digital Moment". The New York Times.
- ^ abU.S.
patent 4,, Patent – Electronic Still camera
- ^U.S. Patent 3,, "Photometer-digitizer system" to Thomas McCord and James Westphal, filed August 7,
- ^"The woman who brought us the world". MIT Technology Review.Steven sasson One of the more rewarding aspects of being the editor of this magazine is being able to visit with people who have been a part of the history of our profession. About nine years ago, I visited with a Kodak engineer named Steven Sasson who shared a most fascinating story about a project he was assigned to by Kodak some 46 years ago. As a child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Sasson was immediately drawn to electronics and was never one to shy away from exploring new technologies. His innate passion and tenacity are illustrated in this story from his early years. After building an amateur radio at age 13 he accidentally sent out a signal on a banned frequency and received a letter from the Federal Communications Commission FCC.
Retrieved
- ^McCord, Thomas (May ). "Two-Dimensional Silicon Vidicon Astronomical Photometer"(PDF). Applied Optics. 11 (3): – BibcodeApOptM. doi/AO PMID&#;
- ^ abDobbin, Ben (September 8, ). "Kodak engineer had revolutionary idea: the first digital camera".Steven sasson biography wikipedia Steven J. Sasson born July 4, is an American electrical engineer and the inventor of the self-contained portable digital camera. He joined Kodak shortly after his graduation from engineering school and retired from Kodak in His mother was Norwegian. He attended and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved November 15,
- ^"Overview of the Institute for Advanced Discovery & Innovation".
- ^"Obama awards the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation Ceremony: Speech Transcript". The Washington Post.
17 November Archived from the original on 10 February
- ^Schulman, Kori (November 17, ). "What You Missed: Tuesday Talk on The National MedalsLaureates of Science, Technology and Innovations".
- Steven sasson biography children
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- Steven sasson biography book
&#; via National Archives.
- ^"Progress Medal". .
- ^"Photokina Daily"(PDF). 22 September Archived from the original(PDF) on Retrieved
- ^"National Academy of Inventors".