Steven Sasson

Steven Sasson is an American electrical engineer who invented the first self-contained digital camera while working as an engineer at Kodak. In 1975 he built a hand-held prototype that used a charge-coupled device sensor to capture a black and white image at a resolution of 100 by 100 pixels, weighed about eight pounds, and recorded each image onto a cassette tape over roughly twenty-three seconds. The device established the basic architecture later used in consumer digital cameras. Sasson worked at Kodak for more than three decades before retiring in 2009. In recognition of the invention he received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama in 2009, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2011, received the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal and Honorary Fellowship in 2012, and was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2018.