The first digital camera to be marketed exclusively to consumers, the Apple QuickTake 100, was introduced thirty years ago today, on February 17
In 1994, Tom Hanks had just wrapped up Forrest Gump, which would go on to win six Oscars that year, Steve Jobs had long since left Apple, and the internet was still a geek’s playground. In the meantime, Apple was hard at work completely transforming the digital camera market. The first consumer-facing color digital camera, the QuickTake 100, was introduced by Cupertino in the same year. It was quite extreme. However, that’s also why it was so significant—this camera popularized the term “digital” in photography and helped make digital cameras as we know them today more widely accepted. The QuickTake 100, a camera that may be forgotten but is still essential to digital photography, celebrates its 30th anniversary this week.
Prior to QuickTake 100
Digital cameras have been around since the 1960s. Eugene Lally, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), explained how mosaic photosensors are used to digitize light signals and create still images. Though the idea of a filmless camera had already been conceived, the technology was not yet ready. In actuality, the astute NASA scientist coined the term “pixel.” Willis Adcock, a worker at Texas Instruments, patented a concept for a digital camera just ten years later.
The original digital camera
But in 1975, Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, created the first digital still camera. At the time, Sasson was in his twenties and had recently started working at Kodak. Despite being a recent hire, Sasson was kept busy with unimportant tasks until he had an intriguing idea to use CCD imaging sensors. It wasn’t that big of a project, so hardly anybody knew I was working on it, Sasson later recalled to the Lens Blog of the New York Times. It wasn’t kept a secret. I suppose it was just a project to keep me out of trouble while doing something else.
Later on, his project produced a digital camera prototype that weighed almost 4 kg. A movie camera lens, an analog/digital converter, a CCD imaging area array, numerous digital and analog circuits connected on six circuit boards, and sixteen batteries were used in its construction. It used a digital cassette tape with a resolution of 0.01 megapixels to record black and white images. The first digital photo was taken in twenty-three seconds.
Although Sasson’s camera was revolutionary, Kodak missed the chance to create a digital camera and instead kept making film cameras. In the years that followed, CCD (charged-couple device) sensors were introduced in cameras. This 1969 invention aided in the development of digital photography. But with the Mavica model prototype, Sony created the first real digital camera in 1981. The Sony Mavica, which resembled a contemporary SLR and was billed as the first electronic still video camera, used CCD chips to capture images onto a 2×2-inch floppy disk, which could store about 25 frames.
Concurrently, the ASI Science Team at the University of Calgary, Canada, created a digital camera that was widely acclaimed as the pioneering digital camera. It was known as the Fairchild All-Sky camera, and it was used to take pictures of auroras. The ability to record digital data instead of analog was what set the Fairchild All-Sky camera apart and made it unique. Eventually, in 1988, the FUJIX DS-1P made its debut with a CCD sensor; however, it was the first to store images internally on an SRAM memory as opposed to tape. A year later, Fujifilm commercially released the camera—the DS-X—despite the fact that the DS-1P was a prototype. The Dycam was the first digital camera to be sold in the United States.
The digital software ecosystem’s inception
In addition to the widespread use of digital cameras in the early 1990s, a software ecosystem supporting digital photography was also established. Standards for digital image and audio files were developed, including JPEG and MPEG. Digitial Darkroom, the first Macintosh image manipulation program, was released in 1988 at the same time. In the meantime, Adobe PhotoShop for Mac released its initial version in 1990.
When Apple QuickTake 100 was introduced
Despite being well-known for its Macintosh personal computers, many were taken aback by Apple’s debut into the digital camera market. During the 1990s, Apple was a disorganized company under the leadership of Steve Jobs, which experimented with various product categories to remain competitive.
For Apple, the digital camera market was uncharted territory devoid of experience. That’s the reason Apple asked Kodak for assistance in creating the QuickTake 100.
The QuickTake 100 was the first color digital camera that consumers could purchase for less than $1,000. It was introduced on February 17, 1994, at the Tokyo Macworld, and released on June 20, 1994. This was a significant development at the time.
In a LinkedIn post ahead of the QuickTake 100’s 30th anniversary, Ken Parulski, who worked for Eastman Kodak for 31 years before retiring as chief scientist in 2012, recalled how Kodak and Apple collaborated closely on the camera’s development. Kodak created the camera architecture, but Cupertino worked on the QuickTake 100’s design and marketing. Actually, Chinon, a Kodak manufacturing partner, made this camera.
The QuickTake 100 was designed to resemble a binocular; it was comfortable to hold in two hands, and its gray casing resembled that of the original Apple PowerBooks. However, it was the camera with the greatest specs available at the time. Up to 32 images at 320×240 resolution (0.08 megapixels) or 8 high-resolution images at 640×480 resolution (0.31 megapixels) could be captured by it. With the fixed-focus lens that came with the camera, it could capture an angle of view comparable to that of a 35mm lens at 50mm. Although it lacked a focus and zoom, its integrated flash allowed it to be used for low-light photography. Three AA batteries were used to power it. Additionally, the device had an LCD info display with settings adjustability and an optical viewfinder, but there was
The QuickTake 150 replaced the QuickTake 100, storing up to 16 of the highest-quality photos with improved file compression technology. The camera was designed to resemble its predecessor and was once more produced by Kodak. Then, in 1996, Apple introduced the QuickTake 200, which included a detachable 2MB SmartMedia flashRAM card. It had a 1.8-inch diagonal color LCD screen on the back for previewing images, giving it a retro feel. But this time, Fujifilm, not Kodak, was the manufacturer of the camera.
It’s true that after Steve Jobs rejoined the Cupertino company in 1997, Apple’s attempt to break into the digital camera market was abandoned. He discontinued a number of ongoing product lines and unfinished projects, such as QuickTake. Despite its lack of popularity, the QuickTake camera line helped make digital cameras more widely available to consumers. It makes sense that Time Magazine listed the Apple QuickTake 100 among its “All TIME 100 Gadgets” in 2010.
The QuickTake 100 may have been forgotten thirty years after it was first released, but it is still a significant chapter in Apple’s past. In the present era, the camera on your iPhone—should you possess one—is at the pinnacle of the digital camera revolution. But if you’re a devoted Apple fan, you have to always remember where it all started. The Apple QuickTake was the catalyst for it all. Happy QuickTake 100th Anniversary!