STORY OF CREATER / INVENTOR OF DIGITAL CAMERA BACK IN 1975

Steven Sasson in 1973, the year he started working at Eastman Kodak. 

Imagine a world where photography is a slow process that is impossible to master without years of study or apprenticeship. A world without iPhones or Instagram, where one company reigned supreme. Such a world existed in 1973, when Steven Sasson, a young engineer, went to work for Eastman Kodak.

Two years later he invented digital photography and made the first digital camera.

Mr. Sasson, all of 24 years old, invented the process that allows us to make photos with our phones, send images around the world in seconds and share them with millions of people. The same process completely disrupted the industry that was dominated by his Rochester employer and set off a decade of complaints by professional photographers fretting over the ruination of their profession.

It started out innocently enough.

Soon after arriving at Kodak, Mr. Sasson was given a seemingly unimportant task — to see whether there was any practical use for a charged coupled device (C.C.D.), which had been invented a few years earlier.

“Hardly anybody knew I was working on this, because it wasn’t that big of a project,” Mr. Sasson said “It wasn’t secret. It was just a project to keep me from getting into trouble doing something else, I guess.”

The very first digital camera created by Steven Sasson in 1973. This camera was the basis for the US patent issued on December 26, 1978.

He quickly ordered a couple of them and set out to evaluate the devices, which consisted of a sensor that took an incoming two dimensional light pattern and converted it into an electrical signal. Mr. Sasson wanted to capture an image with it, but the C.C.D. couldn’t hold it because the electrical pulses quickly dissipated.

To store the image, he decided to use what was at that time a relatively new process — digitalization — turning the electronic pulses into numbers. But that solution led to another challenge — storing it on RAM memory, then getting it onto digital magnetic tape.

The final result was a Rube Goldberg device with a lens scavenged from a used Super-8 movie camera; a portable digital cassette recorder; 16 nickel cadmium batteries; an analog/digital converter; and several dozen circuits — all wired together on half a dozen circuit boards.

It looks strange today, but remember, this was before personal computers – the first build it yourself Apple computer kit went on sale that next year for $666.66.

The camera alone was a historic accomplishment, but he needed to invent a playback system that would take the digital information on the cassette tape and turn it into “something that you could see” on a television set: a digital image.

“This was more than just a camera,” said Mr. Sasson who was born and raised in Brooklyn. “It was a photographic system to demonstrate the idea of an all-electronic camera that didn’t use film and didn’t use paper, and no consumables at all in the capturing and display of still photographic images.”

The camera and the playback system were the beginning of the digital photography era. But the digital revolution did not come easily at Kodak.

“They were convinced that no one would ever want to look at their pictures on a television set.”

Mr. Sasson made a series of demonstrations to groups of executives from the marketing, technical and business departments and then to their bosses and to their bosses. He brought the portable camera into conference rooms and demonstrated the system by taking a photo of people in the room.

“It only took 50 milliseconds to capture the image, but it took 23 seconds to record it to the tape,” Mr. Sasson said. “I’d pop the cassette tape out, hand it to my assistant and he put it in our playback unit. About 30 seconds later, up popped the 100 pixel by 100 pixel black and white image.”

Though the quality was poor, Mr. Sasson told them that the resolution would improve rapidly as technology advanced and that it could compete in the consumer market against 110 film and 135 film cameras. Trying to compare it with already existing consumer electronics, he suggested they “think of it as an HP calculator with a lens.” He even talked about sending images on a telephone line.

Their response was tepid, at best.

“They were convinced that no one would ever want to look at their pictures on a television set,” he said. “Print had been with us for over 100 years, no one was complaining about prints, they were very inexpensive, and so why would anyone want to look at their picture on a television set?”

The main objections came from the marketing and business sides. Kodak had a virtual monopoly on the United States photography market, and made money on every step of the photographic process. If you wanted to photograph your child’s birthday party you would likely be using a Kodak Instamatic, Kodak film and Kodak flash cubes. You would have it processed either at the corner drugstore or mail the film to Kodak and get back prints made with Kodak chemistry on Kodak paper.

It was an excellent business model.

When Kodak executives asked when digital photography could compete, Mr. Sassoon used Moore’s Law, which predicts how fast digital technology advances. He would need two million pixels to compete against 110 negative color film, so he estimated 15 to 20 years. Kodak offered its first consumer cameras 18 years later.

“When you’re talking to a bunch of corporate guys about 18 to 20 years in the future, when none of those guys will still be in the company, they don’t get too excited about it,” he said. “But they allowed me to continue to work on digital cameras, image compression and memory cards.”

The first digital camera was patented in 1978. It was called the electronic still camera. But Mr. Sasson was not allowed to publicly talk about it or show his prototype to anyone outside Kodak.

In 1989, Mr. Sasson and a colleague, Robert Hills, created the first modern digital single-lens reflex (S.L.R.) camera that looks and functions like today’s professional models. It had a 1.2 megapixel sensor, and used image compression and memory cards.

The 1989 version of the digital camera, known as the Ecam (electronic camera). This is the basis of the United States patent issued on May 14, 1991.

But Kodak’s marketing department was not interested in it. Mr. Sasson was told they could sell the camera, but wouldn’t — because it would eat away at the company’s film sales.

“When we built that camera, the argument was over,” Mr. Sasson said. “It was just a matter of time, and yet Kodak didn’t really embrace any of it. That camera never saw the light of day.”

Still, until it expired in the United States in 2007, the digital camera patent helped earn billions for Kodak, since it — not Mr. Sasson — owned it, making most digital camera manufacturers pay Kodak for the use of the technology. Though Kodak did eventually market both professional and consumer cameras, it did not fully embrace digital photography until it was too late.

“Every digital camera that was sold took away from a film camera and we knew how much money we made on film,” Mr. Sasson said. “That was the argument. Of course, the problem is pretty soon you won’t be able to sell film — and that was my position.”

Today, the first digital camera Mr. Sasson made in 1975 is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. President Obama awarded Mr. Sasson the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at a 2009 White House ceremony.

Three years later, Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

NYT

James Estrin

Ocean's Hidden World Of Plankton Revealed In 'Enormous Database'

Planktonic organisms such as these single-celled creatures are found throughout the oceans

The hidden world of the ocean's tiniest organisms has been revealed in a series of papers published in the journal Science.
An international team has been studying samples of plankton collected during a three-year global expedition.

They have so far found 35,000 species of bacteria, 5,000 new viruses and 150,000 single-celled plants and creatures.
They believe that the majority of these are new to science.

Dr Chris Bowler, from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), in Paris, told BBC News: "We have the most complete description yet of planktonic organisms to date: what's there in terms of viruses, bacteria and protozoa - we finally have a catalogue of what is present globally."

This tiny crustacean was found in a sample taken in the South Pacific

Planktonic organisms are minute, but together they make up 90% of the mass of all of the marine life in the oceans.

They include viruses, bacteria, single-celled plants and creatures (protozoa).They form the very base of the food chain, and produce - through photosynthesis - half of the oxygen we breathe.

However, until now, little has been known about this unseen ocean ecosystem.The Tara expedition, primarily funded by the French fashion designer Agnes B, set out to change that.

Many of the organisms are new to science

So far the team has analysed 579 of the 35,000 samples that were collected
An international team of scientists took part in expeditions onboard the Tara schooner between 2009 and 2013.

It sailed 30,000km across the world's oceans, with researchers collecting 35,000 samples, taking them from the very top layers of the ocean down to 1,000m below the waves.

The project has cost about 10m euros.

New viruses

So far the scientists have analysed 579 of the 35,000 samples collected, presenting the results in five scientific papers.

Dr Bowler said the research was transforming our understanding of these ocean communities.
"For the viruses, we describe about 5,000 virus communities - only 39 of these were previously known.

"And for protists - unicellular organisms - we estimate something like 150,000 different taxa.
"There are about 11,000 formally described species of plankton - we have evidence for at least 10 times more than that."

The analysis has revealed that many of the organisms are sensitive to temperature

The researchers also looked at how the different organisms interacted

Planktonic organisms such as these tiny jellyfish and fish are found throughout the oceans

Of the 35,000 microbes found, most had been seen before, however a genetic analysis of them revealed many new genes.

"We have 40 million genes - about 80% of which are new to science," explained Dr Bower.

The researchers also analysed how plankton communities are organised.

"We have thrown all of these together to see who interacts with whom," said Dr Bower.

"We now have a big dataset where we can ask: 'who do you always find with someone else?' or 'who do you never find with someone else'.

"This helps us to describe symbiosis and interactions that go beyond grazing and predator-prey relationships."

'Enormous' Database

The researchers have found that many of the organisms, particularly the bacteria, are sensitive to temperature.

Dr Bowler said: "It is temperature that determines what sort of communities of organisms we find. If we look at our data and we see what organisms are there, we can predict with 97% probability the temperature of the water they are living in.

"These organisms are most sensitive to temperature, more than anything else, and with changing temperatures as a result of climate change we are likely to see changes in this community."

The researchers say that this scientific analysis is just the beginning.

They are making their findings freely available to the scientific community to gain a better understanding of this vital but unseen underwater world.

Dr Bowler continued: "The amount of data we have released is already enormous; it is one of the largest databases of DNA available to the scientific community. But we've analysed perhaps 2% of the samples we have collected throughout the world - so there is a huge amount of work to do in the future to understand even more about the functioning of these marine ecosystems and the importance of that for the wellbeing of the planet.

"So it's really just the beginning of the study."

Article By :

Rebecca MorelleScience Correspondent, BBC News

Hope You Like This Info Stay Tuned With Us Wake Up Your Mind & Know Whats Happening Around You.... !

Panipat Teen Makes Device To Turn Breath Into Words, Enters Google Science Fair ...!

                       Arsh Shah Dilbagi, a 16-year-old from Panipat, has entered the Google's Global Science Fair as the only finalist from Asia this year for developing a device that helps people with developmental disabilities, like Locked-In Syndrome and ALS, communicate, using only their breath.

The device, called 'TALK', uses signals from a person's breath via Morse code, picked up by a sensor, and then converts them into speech. Dilbagi, a student of DAV International School, Panipat, says the device even allows almost entirely speech impaired and paralyzed people to communicate like never before.

Claiming to have built the world's fastest and cheapest Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) device, a kind used by physicist Stephen Hawking, Dilbagi says it is not possible for all those who have motor-neuro disabilities to afford an AAC device that costs $7,000 (Rs 4.26 lakh).

"AAC devices available in the market are very expensive, slow, bulky and not generic. I decided to find a better solution — an AAC device which is faster, portable and generic and costs only $80 (Rs 5000), making it affordable to the large population," he explains.

The young innovator says that TALK expects a person to be able to give two distinguishable exhales with varying intensities, for converting them into electrical signals using a microphone. The signals are processed by a microprocessor, called the 'Morse engine', which labels the short exhales as 'dots' and longer exhales as 'dashes'. These are further interpreted through the Morse code which converts the signals into words and then sends them to another microprocessor for synthesizing them into voice. According to Dilbagi, TALK features two modes - one to communicate in English, and the other to give specific commands and phrases. These are communicated in nine different voices enabled according to gender and age.

Making two major breakthroughs; increasing the speaking rate, and becoming the world's most affordable AAC device, TALK has landed the young prodigy as the only finalist from Asia in Google's Science Fair Challenge.

"I even got predicted results by testing the device on a person suffering from encephalopathy (global brain dysfunction) and Parkinson's disease," he has claimed in his proposal to Google.

He adds, "In future, I would like to add auto-predictions to my computing engine and integrate TALK with modern technology like Google Glass to make it easier for people with development disabilities."

Dilbagi's father, Amit, said, that since childhood his son had dreamt of doing something meaningful for mankind.

"His attention has always been towards applied science projects. I will request Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union health minister Harshvardhan to consider this project for the countless people in need for such a device in our country," he told TOI.

Gurgaon: 

Social Groups Can Help Ease Depression

Researchers have suggested that building a strong connection to a social group helps clinically depressed patients recover and helps prevent relapse.

For the paper, (CIFAR) Senior Fellow Alexander Haslam, lead author Tegan Cruwys and their colleagues at the University of Queensland conducted two studies of patients diagnosed with depression or anxiety. The patients either joined a community group with activities such as sewing, yoga, sports and art, or partook in group therapy at a psychiatric hospital.

In both cases, patients responding to survey questions who did not identify strongly with the social group had about a 50% likelihood of continued depression a month later.

But of those who developed a stronger connection to the group and who came to see its members as 'us' rather than 'them,' less than a third still met the criteria for clinical depression after that time. Many patients said the group made them feel supported because everyone was "in it together."

While past research has looked at the importance of social connections for preventing and treating depression, Haslam, a member of CIFAR's Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being (SIIWB) program, says it has tended to emphasize interpersonal relationships rather than the importance of a sense of group identity.

6 Things Women Notice About Men Right Away

First impressions may be made in moments, but they predict the course your relationships follow. So if you know what exactly about you draws in the votes, you can perfect it -- and do better with the opposite sex. So what do women notice immediately?

According to Dr Gordon Patzer, author of Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined, and one of the world's leading authorities on physical attractiveness, a lot of what women notice in the first few minutes is appearance-based. "A substantial portion of the six features of a man are apparent, in terms of height, weight and overall physical attractiveness," he says. And when appearances don't make the cut, the door slams shut on further interactions.

 Here's a list of things to keep that door open.

1. Physical stature

Yep, you knew this already: size matters. Height and weight are right on top of the list of things women notice. "Too much or too little of either immediately classifies the man as unattractive to women, and closes the door before less physically obviously features (such as confidence) can be determined," says Dr Patzer. Take heart though, the acceptable range is influenced by the woman's own height and weight.

2. Appearances and attractiveness
Yes, beauty is skin deep, but it's going to get women to explore what lies beneath. Attractiveness does include what you were born with, but your genes alone can't scuttle your chances. What really counts is what you do with your hair, clothes, grooming and basic hygiene. If you can't make the effort, women certainly are not going to work hard to learn more about you!

3. Smile
Once women are done assessing your overall build, women will look at your smile. "The ability to smile, particularly within the first few minutes of meeting, sends a welcoming, non-hostile signal to women," says Dr Patzer. There is one proviso though -- the smile must show off reasonably good-looking teeth. It's never too late to fix an appointment with the dentist!

4. Humour

Another reason to show off those pearly whites! Women like men who have the ability to laugh. Even better, make the woman laugh. That instantly nets you bonus points!

5. Confidence

Women find confident men attractive. According to Dr Sameer Malhotra, head of psychiatry and psychotherapy department at Fortis Hospital in New Delhi, within the first few minutes of meeting, women will not only suss out your level of confidence, they will also interpret the vibes you give out and how you think. "Women notice how clear or decisive you are and whether you approach things positively." Just remember, cockiness and arrogance are not the same as confidence!

6. Conversation
Men have successfully given womankind the impression of being strong and silent. So women aren't expecting you to have mad talking skills. All you've got to do hold her attention. "We know (scientifically) that the more or longer that a woman gets to know a man, the more physically attractive he becomes in her mind," says Dr Patzer. Women are looking for someone to keep up the conversation -- so forget the one-liners, just be yourself!