The Development of Digital Photography

The first developments in digital photography were that of scanned imagery. The first digitally scanned photograph was produced in 1957. The digital scanning process was invented by Russell A. Kirsch, a computer pioneer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He developed the system capable of feeding a camera's images into a computer. His first fed image was that of his son, Walden Kirsch. The photo was set at 176x176 pixels.

The charge-coupled device (CCD) is the most important invention for digital photography allowing for image captures. It was invented in 1969 by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith at AT&T Bell Laboratories. The lab was working on the Picturephone and on the development of semiconductor bubble memory. Merging these two initiatives, Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed 'Charge "Bubble" Devices'. The essence of the design was the ability to transfer a charge along the surface of a semiconductor.

In 1973, Fairchild Semiconductor releases the first large image forming CCD microchip capable of capturing 100 pixel rows and 100 pixel columns. In 1975, Bryce Bayer of Kodak developed  the Bayer filter mosaic pattern for CCD color image sensors. And in 1986, Kodak scientists developed the world's first megapixel sensor.
The internet has been a popular medium for storing and sharing photos ever since the first photograph was published on the web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 (an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes). Today popular sites such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and PhotoBucket are used by millions of people to share their pictures.