Tag: kodak

Steven Sasson invented the digital camera, then Kodak promptly ignored it

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In 1975, Kodak asked one of its younger employees to play around with charged coupled devices to see what he could make. Turns out Steven Sasson invented the first digital camera: He quickly ordered a couple of them and set out to evaluate the devices, which consisted of a sensor that took an incoming two dimensional light pattern and converted it into an electrical signal. Mr. Sasson wanted to capture an image with it, but the C.C.D. couldn’t hold it because the electrical pulses quickly dissipated. To store the image, he decided to use what was at that time a relatively

Kodak’s 140,000 vs Instagram’s 13

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Jaron Lainer in Salon: At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?