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This 1972
edition of Electronics magazine shows the blurred first image
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The Queen Elizabeth Prize is a global
£1million (US$1.2million) prize that celebrates a ground-breaking
innovation in engineering.
It has run since 2013, when the first prize was
awarded to the creators of the Internet, the browser and the World Wide
Web.
The prize rewards an individual or team of
engineers whose work has had a major impact on humanity.
The prize also celebrates engineering as a
discipline and career choice in an attempt to get more young people involved in
the subject.
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Dr
Michael Tompsett, pictured with wife Margaret, was one of four winners of
the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, netting the award for
inventing the digital camera. He is shown here with his original camera
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As the inventor of the digital camera, you’d
think that Dr Michael Tompsett would be a
But the man whose ideas led
to Instagram and the cameraphone actually bemoans the very ‘selfie culture’
that he helped to create.
And the 77-year-old Briton, who was yesterday
awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering along with three others, has
even admitted that at times he regrets inventing the device.
Speaking as he accepted the £1million award, the
highest accolade for engineering, the pioneer admitted that he is irritated by
people using digital cameras to take selfies.
He said: ‘I never take selfies. It’s totally
unnecessary.
‘Here in London, for example, there are hordes of
tourists even at this time of year and outside Westminster Abbey and the Houses
of Parliament you can’t go anywhere without people standing in the middle of
the pavement taking pictures and taking selfies, and shoving selfie sticks in
front of you.
‘At that point I just say, “Why the hell did
anybody invent this stuff?”
‘How many
people look at their selfies? It’s just to prove they are at a particular
location.
‘I don’t think you are doing justice either to
yourself or to the location, frankly.’
Dr Tompsett, who was originally from Writtle,
Essex, and now lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, added: ‘Of course, it’s
generational. I’m in the older generation and younger folks are doing this all
the time.’
And despite his invention making it possible to
take large numbers of pictures, he prefers to stick to just taking one or two.
The Cambridge graduate added: ‘Film was
expensive, and I used to develop and print the pictures myself as well and it
took a lot of time.
'I would compose pictures in various ways very
carefully.
‘I still tend to do that. Even though I could
take ten, 20, 100 on my phone now, I tend just to take one.’
However, despite his apparent hatred of selfies,
Dr Tompsett seemed happy to make an exception yesterday – taking a snap with
two of his fellow prize winners: Nobukazu Teranishi, of Japan, and Eric Fossum
from the US.
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The CMOS device, also
known as 'camera on a chip' technology, now features in most modern digital
cameras
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In the 1970s and 80s, they, along with fourth
prize recipient American George Smith, developed a series of electronic sensors
that transformed digital imaging and made most film-based photography
redundant.
It began in 1971, when Dr Tompsett, who was
working at Bell Laboratories in the US, realized a device invented by
colleagues for computer memory circuits could have another use: taking
pictures.
Called a ‘charge-coupled device’, it converts
light to an electrical signal.
And in 1972, his wife Margaret appeared in the
first colour digital image – on the cover of the magazine International
Electronics.
Professor Teranishi invented a device called the
pinned photodiode, or PPD, which allows higher resolution digital images.
And Professor Fossum came up with the
complementary metal oxide semiconductor, or CMOS, which led to ‘a camera on a
chip’.
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The £1million (US$1.2million)
Queen Elizabeth Prize this year went to the developers of technologies that
convert light into digital signals. Princess Anne is pictured giving the prize
to (left to right) Dr Michael Tompsett, Professor Nobukazu Teranishi, and
Professor Eric Fossum
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However, while a Briton had a key role in
inventing the digital camera, the biggest beneficiaries may have been in Asia,
where most of the devices are manufactured.
But it wouldn’t be the first time that a British
invention was exploited worldwide.
Other UK electronic creations include the television, made in 1925 by John Logie Baird, and the first video recorder, called the Telcan, which was invented in 1963 by Norman Rutherford and Michael Turner of the Nottingham Electronic Valve Company.
Originally published on Daily Mail UK
