In December 1975, a young engineer at the American company Eastman Kodak took the world’s first photograph with a handheld digital camera, a moment that would change the imaging industry forever.

Steve Sasson joined Kodak in 1973, when the company was the global film photography giant. At that time, every step of the process, from film and chemicals to photographic paper, was controlled by Kodak itself.

But Sasson, an electrical engineer, was not enthused by the long process of film development. Inspired by the futuristic technologies of “Star Trek”, he began to wonder: What if photography was done all electronically, without film and without chemicals?

The technology that would enable the digital camera existed: the CCD sensor, a circuit capable of recording light as an electrical charge. His superior only asked him to “study it,” but Sasson saw an opportunity to create something completely new.

With a lack of funds and no official support, he built the prototype from parts collected in Kodak’s laboratories: a film camera lens, a tape recorder for data storage, an analog-to-digital converter, and a very expensive Motorola microprocessor, purchased through a technical request that did not mention the camera.

Then more than a year of work with colleague Jim Schueckler, the prototype was finalized: a large 3.6 kg device that saved a photo within 23 seconds on audio tape and displayed it on a television through a special playback unit.

The first photo was taken of a colleague, Joy Marshall. Initially the image was distorted, but after some technical adjustments, the image appeared clear: it was the first digital photograph taken with a hand-held camera.

Sasson began to demonstrate the invention to company executives. The feedback was not technical, but strategic. Asked about timeframes, Sasson gave a prediction based on Moore’s Law: 15–20 years. In 1995, Kodak introduced the DC40, its first digital camera, exactly 18 years later.

In 1978, Kodak received the first digital camera patent, which later brought the company billions of dollars through licensing. However, experts say that Kodak was not unprepared, the technology simply came faster than the market.

Sasson’s invention only really became understandable to the public after the explosion of personal computers and the Internet in the 1990s.

In 1998, during a family trip to Yellowstone, he saw the crowds waiting for the Old Faithful geyser to erupt: some with film cameras, some with video cameras, and many others with digital cameras. “I said to my wife: It’s happening,” he recalls.

Today, the original prototype is housed in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, while the technology that Sasson started with a simple idea in 1975 has become the basis of modern photography, from professional cameras to everyday cellphones.

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