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How do cameras, telescopes and the Nobel Prize all fit together? We discovered that this year when the co-inventors of the CCD were awarded the Nobel Prize.

In the past, winners of the Nobel Prize have usually been more known for research they have been doing research in their fields. But the Nobel Prize originally was set up to reward those who created inventions more so than research. And this year’s award to both men who created the CCD returns the prize to inventors once again.

CCD stands for charge-coupled device. This is the internal device that digital cameras and camcorders use to collect and capture the light from a scene and store it inside in the camera. George E. Smith and Willard S Boyle collaborated at Bell Labs in 1969 where they developed the technology and worked to incorporate it into an actual working model. After their first attempts, they had a working video camera approximately one year later. This discovery changed the world of image recording forever.

Since the time the CCD was invented, it has totally revolutionized all the areas which depend on image capture.

In addition to quick adoption in cameras and camcorders, CCD technology was also quickly adapted to such items as telescopes and medical imaging devices. It wasn’t long before the CCD was riding on rockets and is used in space probes, spy satellites and astronomical telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope. Ground based telescopes also quickly changed over to CCDs. Viewing film plates taken in long exposures by telescopes is a thing of the past. Now images are captured electronically and viewed and processed on computers.

This amazing change in photography and video capture has been the change we are all most familiar with. Modern digital cameras and camcorders have quickly switched over to using technology that is a direct descendant of the CCD. Digital photography has quickly replaced film with it’s ease of use and matching or better quality.

In addition, other uses such as night vision technology for camcorders with night vision and the night vision video camera all use the Nobel prize winner’s technology to collect and amplify the light. Uses such as this were not heard of a few decades ago.

The work of Boyle and Smith in inventing the CCD has totally changed the world landscape of recording images. Their contribution to technology will be long remembered and applauded. If the granting of the Nobel Prize were to be graded by the actual number of human beings affected by the discovery, the invention of the CCD would have to rank near or at the top of the list.