Inventor Portrait: Steven Sasson from David Friedman on Vimeo.
This video is part of an ongoing series of photo and video portraits of contemporary inventors from all walks of life. More can be seen at dfpblog.com/inventors
It’s been way too long since I’ve posted one of these. This is my portrait of Steven Sasson, inventor of the digital camera. He was the 32nd inventor in my project. I shot him in October at Kodak’s headquarters in Rochester, just a couple weeks before President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Technology.
When he initially mentioned that the first digital camera held 30 pictures, I assumed that was due to the storage capacity of the digital tape. It was really interesting to hear that he picked 30 as an artificial limitation, and his explanation why.
Update: A lot of people have asked what the subject of that first photo was. It’s an interesting story, but the short answer is that the first digital photo was a picture of a lab technician named Joy. And he didn’t save the image.
