Which Fortune 500 company built the first prototype digital camera in 1975?

Eastman Kodak built the first prototype digital camera in 1975. Kodak engineer Steven Sasson assembled the experimental device while working in the company’s research laboratories.

The prototype used a charge-coupled device image sensor supplied by Fairchild Semiconductor and recorded images on a cassette tape. It weighed about 8 pounds, captured black-and-white images at roughly 0.01 megapixels, and took about 23 seconds to record an image.

The camera was an engineering demonstration rather than a consumer product. Its images had to be viewed on a television, and the prototype had no practical way to compete with inexpensive film cameras at the time.

Kodak later became strongly associated with film photography, but it also developed important digital-imaging technology. A common misconception is that Kodak commercialized the first consumer digital camera immediately; the company’s 1975 prototype preceded widespread consumer digital photography by many years.