In 1975, an odd-looking gadget resembling a small toaster changed the future of photography. It was the world’s first handheld digital camera, created quietly inside Kodak by engineer Steve Sasson and his team. At a time when film dominated the industry, the idea of capturing images electronically was almost unimaginable.
Sasson’s prototype weighed nearly four kilograms and needed a shoulder-strap battery pack to operate. Instead of film, it used a new CCD electronic sensor to record black-and-white images at a resolution of just 0.01 megapixels. Each photo took 23 seconds to capture and another 23 seconds to display on a television screen using a custom playback device.
Despite its limitations, the invention demonstrated something radical: photography didn’t need film at all. Images could be captured, stored, and viewed digitally, an idea that challenged Kodak’s entire business model. Executives were intrigued by the technology but didn’t see an immediate commercial use, so the project remained internal.
The camera recorded pictures onto a digital cassette tape, a technology that required the team to build new software, storage methods, and processors from scratch. According to Sasson, the biggest challenge wasn’t the hardware it was convincing people that electronic photography could ever replace film.
Although Kodak didn’t pursue digital cameras aggressively at the time, the prototype became the foundation for the devices used today. Its core concepts, solid-state sensors, digital storage, and instant playback are now standard in smartphones and professional cameras worldwide.
Fifty years later, the “toaster with a lens” stands as a reminder of how one experimental idea reshaped the way the world captures memories.
