Developers of digital camera technology receive Nobel Prize
On Tuesday, October 6, 2009 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Boyle and Smith, as well as scientist Charles Kuen Kao, who developed a way to transmit light via fiber optics. Thanks to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, we are able to capture billions of images without loading a single roll of film and transmit our images around the world with ease.
Building upon Albert Einstein s 1921 Nobel Prize winning theory of the law of the photoelectric effect, Boyle and Smith stumbled upon the creation the electronic image sensor. They set out to develop a better electronic memory device in 1969 while working at Bell Labs, but instead produce the first charge-coupled device (or CCD) that is now employed in nearly all digital camera technology.
Their first 100x100 pixel video camera evolved in the 1970 s in to the first 1.4 megapixel camera in 1986, then in to the first fully digital camera in 1995. Digital camera technology has rocketed NASA s Hubble telescope photo efforts in ways film technology never could. CCD technology has opened the doors to medical explorations, microsurgery, and diagnostics. Digital technology is able to capture information neither film nor the human eye can see. Thanks to Boyle and Smith, you are able to take photos of nearly any and everything your heart desires, and thanks to Kao, you re able to transmit them around the world in seconds.
For further info on this year s Nobel Prize recipients, visit:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2009/press.html
