Digital cameras were first conceived by Eugene F. Lally as a means to record still images of the planets and stars during manned planetary missions. Working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, he suggested an all-optical guidance system for these missions.
In 1961 Mr. Lally wrote a paper titled "Mosaic Guidance for Interplanetary Travel," which was published at the American Rocket Society convention. His plan created a mosaic image plane made up of tiny sensors to record these still images. The sensors were identified as "mosaic detectors" and were eventually called "pixels" in today's digital photography.
In the early 1970s this idea resurfaced in the form of digital cameras used for still photography. In addition to his original ideas, Mr. Lally envisioned a means of approaching automatic white balance that was accurate; this was originally used in Nikon cameras with 3D color matrix metering.
Video tape recorders were the forerunners of digital cameras, the first being developed in 1951; these captured the live images from television cameras and stored these images in digital form on tapes that were magnetic. Put into common use in television the VTR was pioneered by Bing Crosby Labs.
In 1972 Texas Instruments patented the first filmless cameras and were followed nine years later by Sony Corporation's release of the Mavica still camera. Mini discs were used to record the information for the Mavica, and they in turn read the data into a television or color printer.
Kodak has done the true pioneering for digital cameras as we know them today. They created several solid-state sensors, which converted pictures and light directly to digital form. In 1986 they released the first megapixel digital camera; this camera was able to record 1.4 million pixels and had the ability to create a photo-quality print that was 5x7 inches.