1970sReputable sourceWell documented
The Digital Camera
On the timeline · around 1970s ·
What happened
In 1973 Steve Sasson, a young engineer at Kodak, built the first fully digital camera — a device the size of a toaster that captured tiny 0.8-megapixel black-and-white images onto a cassette tape. Crude and experimental at first, digital imaging improved relentlessly, and within a few decades it had almost entirely replaced film.
Why it matters
The digital camera was as revolutionary as the daguerreotype. Freed from film and chemicals, photography became instant, endlessly reproducible, and — once married to the smartphone — something billions of people do every day.