CCD Image Sensor Inventors Win $500,000 Award

saskboy writes "CCD inventors were honoured this week. According to CBC News, "Willard Boyle, a Canadian scientist who helped invent the light-sensitive chip, accepted (the prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize) in the U.S. on Tuesday. Boyle and George Smith will share the $500,000 US award for the invention of the "Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), a light-sensitive component at the heart of digital cameras and other widely used imaging technologies," the U.S. National Academy of Engineering said." Those other devices include the Hubble Space Telescope, and orthoscopic medical instruments. "Boyle and Smith came up with the idea for the device while working at Bell Laboratories in 1969. 'It was after maybe an hour's work,' Boyle recalled. 'We went over to the blackboard and we had some sketching there. We went down to our models lab and made one.'""

Comments

Re:Hehe kind of late

[AutopsyReport]

Unfortunately everyone else that utilized the CCD struck it rich, not Boyle himself. I saw this on Daily Planet yesterday, and how they were sort of joking about it. He didn't get rich because he didn't own the rights to the patent, his company did. That's what happens when you get paid to research / invent.