Steven Sasson

Steven J. Sasson (born July 4, 1950) is an American electrical engineer and the inventor of the ''self-contained'' (portable) digital camera. Sasson is a 1972 (BS) and 1973 (MS) graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in electrical engineering. He attended and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School. He has worked for Kodak since shortly after his graduation from engineering school.

First self-contained digital camera

Steven Sasson invented the self-contained digital camera at Kodak in 1975.History of the digital camera and digital imaging
Digital Camera Museum It weighed and had only 100 × 100 resolution (0.01 megapixels). The image was recorded onto a cassette tape and this process took 23 seconds. His camera took images in black-and-white. As he set out on his design project, what he envisioned for the future was a camera without mechanical moving parts (although his device did have moving parts, such as the tape drive).

Sasson's patent claimed an arrangement that allowed 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; Patent – Electronic Still camera essentially all modern digital cameras still use such an arrangement.
His was not the first camera that produced digital images, but was the first hand-held digital camera. Earlier examples of digital cameras included some cameras used for satellite photography, experimental devices by Michael Francis Tompsett ''et al.'', and the commercial product and hobbyist camera called the Cromemco Cyclops.

Life and career

Sasson was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ragnhild Tomine (Endresen) and John Vincent Sasson. His mother was Norwegian. His invention began in 1975 with a broad assignment from his supervisor at Eastman Kodak Company, Gareth A. Lloyd: to attempt to build an electronic camera using a charge coupled device (CCD). The resulting camera invention was awarded the U.S. patent number 4,131,919.

Sasson continues to work for the Eastman Kodak Company, now working in an intellectual property protection role. Sasson joined the University of South Florida Institute for Advanced Discovery & Innovation in 2018, where he is a member and courtesy professor.

On November 17, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Sasson the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. This is the highest honor awarded by the US government to scientists, engineers, and inventors. On September 6, 2012 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."

Leica Camera AG honored Sasson by presenting to him a limited edition 18-megapixel Leica M9 Titanium camera at the Photokina 2010 trade show event.

Sasson was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2011 , and later elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2018.

Patents

* Patent – Electronic Still camera

References

External links

The Dawn of Digital Photography
- interview with Steven Sasson on the invention of the digital camera
Disruptive Innovation: The Story of the First Digital Camera
lecture by Steven Sasson at the Linda Hall Library (October 26, 2011)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sasson, Steven
1950 births
Living people
20th-century American inventors
21st-century American inventors
Digital photography
Kodak people
People from Brooklyn
American electrical engineers
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni
Place of birth missing (living people)
Brooklyn Technical High School alumni
American people of Norwegian descent
Engineers from New York (state)