One hour brainstorming session --> Heart behind the Digital Camera
Washington post has a beautiful article on how the heart behind the digital camera - the CCD (charge couple device) was born. Pretty interesting story. Two guys who were afraid that their funding might get cut - do a one hour brainstorming session and come up with the brilliant idea.
[link]
He (boss) called every two or three days, and Boyle and collaborator George E. Smith soon got the idea that their funding might disappear unless they invented something in a hurry. So they did.In a one-hour brainstorming session in late 1969, Boyle and Smith drew up the basic design for a memory chip they called a "charge-coupled device," more familiarly known as a "CCD."
Something else that was very funny in the article.
In the late 1980s, Kodak developed the professional "Kodak Digital Camera System," which debuted -- with a 20-megabyte hard disk and a backpack to run the electronics -- at the 1991 Super Bowl.