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First Digital Scan, 1957

Russell A. Kirsch (born 1929) is an American former engineer at the National Bureau of Standards who developed the first digital image scanner. SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) was demonstrated in April 1950, and in May 1950 it went into full production, making it the first fully functional stored-program electronic computer in the US. In 1951 Kirsch joined the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) as part of the team which ran SEAC. In 1957, Kirsch's group developed a digital image scanner, to "trace variations of intensity over the surfaces of photographs", and made the first digital scans. One of the first photographs scanned, a picture of Kirsch's three month old son, Walden, was captured as just 30,976 pixels, a 176 x 176 array, in an area measuring 5 cm x 5 cm. The bit depth was only one bit per pixel, stark black and white with no intermediate shades of gray, but by combining several scans made using different scanning thresholds, grayscale information could also be acquired.
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Title:
First Digital Scan, 1957
Caption:
Russell A. Kirsch (born 1929) is an American former engineer at the National Bureau of Standards who developed the first digital image scanner. SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) was demonstrated in April 1950, and in May 1950 it went into full production, making it the first fully functional stored-program electronic computer in the US. In 1951 Kirsch joined the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) as part of the team which ran SEAC. In 1957, Kirsch's group developed a digital image scanner, to "trace variations of intensity over the surfaces of photographs", and made the first digital scans. One of the first photographs scanned, a picture of Kirsch's three month old son, Walden, was captured as just 30,976 pixels, a 176 x 176 array, in an area measuring 5 cm x 5 cm. The bit depth was only one bit per pixel, stark black and white with no intermediate shades of gray, but by combining several scans made using different scanning thresholds, grayscale information could also be acquired.
Credit:
Album / NIST/Science Source
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Image size:
3110 x 4200 px | 37.4 MB
Print size:
26.3 x 35.6 cm | 10.4 x 14.0 in (300 dpi)
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