2009 Nobel Prize Awarded for Digital Camera Sensor!

[disneyboy2003]

Call me a nerd, but I was really excited to read that part of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics went to 2 men who invented the CCD, which is what digital cameras use on their sensors to capture images electronically. (I'm sure I must be saying this technical stuff all wrong, but you get the gist of my excitement)

Hope this brings a smile to all the photographers on this board!


Here's the link: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2009/press.html

Here's the text:

A large share of the traffic is made up of digital images, which constitute the second part of the award. In 1969 Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith invented the first successful imaging technology using a digital sensor, a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device). The CCD technology makes use of the photoelectric effect, as theorized by Albert Einstein and for which he was awarded the 1921 year's Nobel Prize. By this effect, light is transformed into electric signals. The challenge when designing an image sensor was to gather and read out the signals in a large number of image points, pixels, in a short time.

The CCD is the digital camera's electronic eye. It revolutionized photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film. The digital form facilitates the processing and distribution of these images. CCD technology is also used in many medical applications, e.g. imaging the inside of the human body, both for diagnostics and for microsurgery.

Digital photography has become an irreplaceable tool in many fields of research. The CCD has provided new possibilities to visualize the previously unseen. It has given us crystal clear images of distant places in our universe as well as the depths of the oceans.​

 

[boBQuincy]

OK, you're a nerd! Me too, because I saw it too, in a trade journal email I received (I am an engineer nerd). We owe these guys a lot for rescuing us from film!