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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.'""
Or maybe you're not aware that light sensitivity was considered a peculiar and irritating characteristic of some semiconductor memory. Not much of a problem inside an opaque case, unless nuclear decay or cosmic rays generate a photon...
Having worked for a number of years in the optical astronomy field during the transition from photographic plates to CCD imaging I for one truly appreciate the CCD. No more baking plates in nitrogen and choosing the right emulsion for the wavelength of interest.
Now, the IR sensitivity was a different matter, played hob with the spectrograph we retrofitted with a CCD camera. First order IR overlapping second order blue.....
UNIX: 'cuz you can tattoo it on your knuckles!
...every other optical telescope in the world nowadays.
CCDs did more to revolutionize astronomy in the 20th century than the Hubble Space Telescope did. They enabled the HST, but also effectively multiplied the size of all ground-based telescopes by a factor of 10-- although it's not so simple as that, as CCDs provide a host of other advantages really making quantitative imaging possible.
CCDs were huge for astronomy. The "CCD revolution" in the 80's (at least 10 years before most people had really heard of digital cameras) made a big difference.
This invention really contributed to keeping the Cold War from heating up - reconnaissance satellites equipped with this technology were very useful to ensuring all sides kept their ends of the bargain during various arms control treaties. Not to mention their usefulness in charting maps and letting us all see from a new perspective.
It's kind of funny when you think about it, but this little invention has broadened our understanding of the entire universe while helping prevent us from blowing each other up down here on earth at the same time. You just can't say that about many things. Great work, gentlemen. Great work.
Corrected for inflation, TVs before the '60s costed a lot more than they do now
Corrected for inflation, wages have plummeted in the last 30 years.
I haven't heard of 28% credit cards, I would think those would be going to the people that shouldn't ever have a credit card.
Like college students. No better way to fuck over somebody's finances than to bury them in debt before they even get a job. Give them $20,000 in student loans and $20,000 in 28% credit card debt and watch them fail. It's fun for the whole society! Throw in a few "let's start over for the eighth time" layoffs, then make fun of them because they are financially ruined twice by age 30. Then let's tell them what losers they are as they try to scramble out of depression, debt and misery.
Oh, and let's also just declare their degree worthless the moment they earn it. Such fucking losers. They should be able to afford houses that are priced 50 times what they are worth.
Now let's all sing the company song.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
What really gets me here is that you seem to think you're actually better than people watching their plasma screens. I don't mind you thinking you're better off doing something else with your time. I can also see how the world would become a better place for you (and possibly a lot of the /. public) if all these people got off their couches and behind a keyboard.
/., venting your petty frustration because some manager obviously had the good sense to notice you're just a waste of his corporation's money, his time and frankly: ours.
But really, what moral advantage do you have over them? And how exactly would the world become a better place for them? As some other poster already mentioned, these people are actually happy as they are, or at least think they are without ill side effects, which pretty much amounts to the same.
And how about getting off your ass and actually contributing something instead of wasting your time on a forum like