[Reaganite Republican]

*** PING ***

[leprechaun9]

The CCD, the key element in the first Digital camera was invented in 1969 at Bell Telephone Laboratories by Willard Boyle and George Smith. They received a Nobel Prize for this invention in 2009 (40 years later).

A video was produced in 1975 with presentations by the inventors explaining the device. The video can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Za3FY1axI.

It was a very exciting time to work there. Other major inventions include HALOGRAMs, TELSTAR (first active communications satellite), and many more.

[NewHampshireDuo]

In the late ‘90s I purchased a Kodak microscopy camera. It wasn’t cheap. Came with a driver for Win98. They never supported it beyond Win98 and within a year I had an obsolete camera. Never purchased another Kodak product again.

[Vaquero]

We must protect the buggy whip industry at all costs!

[Dr. Sivana]

Alas, much like the stale suits at 'Big Blue' IBM failed to grasp the monumental significance/value of the initial Windows OS presented to them by Bill Gates,

That's not how it went. Windows 1.0 was simply a GUI on top of DOS, and wasn't capable of much, but IBM knew that a real OS with a GUI shell would be necessary, which is why OS/2 with Presentation Manager was worked on long before a serious version of Windows would be released. IBM's mistake was working with Microsoft on it, allowing MS to parlay the OS/2 work into Windows NT, leaving IBM with a high-priced 16 bit OS2 addressing a 32 bit processor (80386) and bus (MCA). MS even had a lot of the OS2 related patents, and had a license to sell MS labeled versions of early OS2 even after useful versions of Windows came out. By the time IBM marshalled the resources to rework the product into OS2/Warp, it was too late.

The real story is more complex, but the original Windows had nothing there to get worked up about, and decent GUIs were being prepped by folks other than MS (Apple, GEM, Amiga/Commodore, XWin). MS was the one who got the market timing and compatibility right.

[BfloGuy]

much like the stale suits at 'Big Blue' IBM failed to grasp the monumental significance/value of the initial Windows OS

True, but IBM recovered. Kodak hasn't.

[SampleMan]

Sears is another company that failed to embrace opportunity. It was positioned to change an already large mail order business and trusted name into an Amazon type model, but instead, they fixated on being America’s mall anchor store. Young people today have no idea what a Sears catalogue even was.

[rlmorel]

I was one of the first people to have a digital camera...the first one I had was an Apple camera we bought for work, that I would take to parties with a laptop (I had to practice with it you know...:) and people thought it was great...to see the party pictures before you leave...better than Polaroid!

Then I bought a Kodak DC-50, and I took a lot of pictures with that. Sadly, I had a computer malfunction and lost many of them. Since then, I have made sure I have things backed up correctly, so that won’t happen again.

I will say this for Kodak-even though they used a stupid proprietary format, and the images were a bit oversaturated, they generally had the color balance right.

[Rummyfan]

Kodak did invent the digital camera but failed to see the future of photography and follow though.

[RayChuang88]

Kodak should have been at the very forefront of the digital imaging revolution. If they had played their cards right, the image sensor on the iPhone 5 in 2013 would be made by Kodak, not Sony.