this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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CassetteFuturism

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this is a space for Cassette Futurism -- retro images, media, design and technology from the 70s and 80s

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I remember reading about how Kodak tried to block digital cameras (even its own) so as not to compromise their own film business, only to be caught unprepared later on when the digital camera revolution came anyway and then took massive losses.

It's funny how they build the first.

[–] raltoid 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Then later they almost shut down their entire consumer film production because of digital cameras. So they were right in thinking it would massively impact them, but made some very wrong choices because of it.

[–] TheBat 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If only they would've started first instead of pretending change wouldn't happen.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

So suppressing the next big competing technology just put their company behind after it became ubiquitous? Is there a lesson to be learned here? I don’t have time to figure it out—somebody’s gotta mine all this coal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Kodak management: Consumers don’t want instant gratification!

[–] espentan 5 points 1 year ago

It's a bit like discovering electric lighting and brushing it under the carpet, since your candle factory is blooming, while thinking/hoping that no one else will ever see a future for electric lights.

It must be one of the biggest faux pas in corporate history.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I read an interesting analysis: We as consumers just see pictures, but to them they were a chemical processing company. That didn't translate at all to digital pictures in any way like corporate experience, mindset, technical expertise, etc. It would have been hard to mentally make the change before it hit them in the face.

[–] veroxii 7 points 1 year ago

There's a great video talking about this and also about how Fuji film had a different strategy and survived.

https://youtu.be/AdDIy0c5ZGo

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

And nowadays only Christopher Nolan keeps them in business.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's worth noting this is the first commercially available digital camera. The digital camera aboard Landsat 1 (launched 1972) was developed in 1969, predating this by 6 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

EDIT: I looked at the wrong instrument. See comments below to read about the MSS, "the oldest operational multispectral digital sensor"

This is what I see from a quick search. According to Wikipedia page Landsat 1 - Sensors:

ERTS-A had two sensors to achieve its primary objectives: the return beam vidicon (RBV) and the multispectral scanner (MSS).

And from Return-Beam Vidicon (RBV) Overview:

The Return-Beam Vidicon (RBV) sensor utilised vidicon tube instruments containing an electron gun that read images from a photoconductive faceplate similar to television cameras. The data stream received from the satellite was analog-to-digital preprocessed to correct for radiometric and geometric errors.

So... if I understand it correctly, it was an analog camera which signal was at the end converted to digital. But please correct me if I'm wrong!

ninja-EDIT: What happened on 1969, according to The First Digital Camera Was the Size of a Toaster - IEEE Spectrum:

CCDs [...] were invented in 1969 by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith at Bell Labs,

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This also may be my lack of understanding, but I was referring to the Multi Spectral Scanner (MSS) on Landsat 1 which used band scanning and stored/transmitted digital images. https://gisrsstudy.com/multispectral-scanner-sensor/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ok, I looked at the wrong instrument.

Regarding the MMS, here (page 3) it says:

MSS sensor, the oldest operational multispectral digital sensor

Then I found this diagram (with some explanations on this link):

If I understand correctly, that means it has a 6 pixel-row resolution that it uses to scan a 2D area.

Finally, I realized I was using a wrong idea of "digital camera". There is no true "digital sensor", all sensors are analog and always need a postprocess to convert to digital... right?

As always, it's impossible to provide a non-ambiguous definition. Is a 6-pixel row res instrument on a satelite a "digital camera"? ... kind of :)

Anyway, fascinating topic. Thanks for the input!