The start of digital cameras ...
Work on digital technology has been in development since 1956 when the video tape recorder was invented that took the images produced on the television and saved them onto magnetic tape. Since then the developments in the industry have been immense and there are so many different products now available the market is bigger than ever.
The first digital camera ...The first product to be able to take photographic images with out a film was made in Texas and worked by saving the images onto a mini disk. Once the images were on the disk they were transferred to either a television or to a colour printer enabling you to get your images in a hard copy. Although this was a major move forward in the way of digital technology it is not classed as the first digital camera because it was a video recorder that was capable of taking freeze frames of video.
In the 70's Kodak invented the first image sensors that created digital images known as mega-pixels. However, it wasn't until 1991 that they produced the first professional digital camera these were aimed at the photojournalists and had a 1.3 mega-pixel sensor on them. This major break through was discovered by a Steven Sasson who built a camera that was about the size of two bags of sugar, weighed eight pounds and could take images to a quality of just 0.01 pixel, where as the ones you see today can reach over 10 mega-pixels.
Uses for digital cameras ...As well as leisure use the digital technology in digital cameras today proves very helpful in the way of teaching, even more so with children who are deaf or have extreme hearing problems. For example the teacher can take a photo of something that relates to something they are teaching in their lesson and show it either by using a computer/laptop or even a digital projector so to show it to the whole class at once. The way this technology is most helpful with deaf children is the way that the teacher can take photographs of their surroundings to help them become familiar with the language they need to be using for the different objects. It makes it easy fro the teacher to have a one on one session with the children and a laptop with all the information they need on it, they could even keep photos of the children doing these exercises to show back to them as a refresh.
As the technology advances with digital cameras the uses for them increases, they are now not only used for recreational use but for business meetings, in schools, in medical practice and widely used through out journalism. So who knows what the future holds for their technology and use. If you want to know more about the technology behind digital cameras then there is plenty of information online and at local camera shops.