Willard S. Boyle, Physicist who Transformed Photography, Dies at 86
MAY 11, 2011 TAGS:
Were it not for the efforts of physicist Willard S. Boyle, the world may never have seen the brutal death of 26 year-old Iranian protester Neda Agha-Soltan, who was gunned down by Iranian police while marching the streets of Tehran in 2009. A fellow protester captured the horror with his mobile phone’s video camera. It was a shockingly violent video, one that showed the inhumanity of a regime that kills its own people, and one that also displayed the power of instantly captured and disseminated images.
Boyle, who died May 7th at 86, invented the digital eye behind the lens of that protester’s camera and behind the lens of every digital camera on the planet, the charge-coupled device or CCD. Boyle worked at Bell labs after earning his doctorate at Montreal’s McGill University. In 1969, working alongside George E. Smith, Boyle figured out how to harness a physical phenomenon first explained by Einstein.
When light hits a metal surface, a small amount of current runs through the metal. This phenomenon is called the photoelectric effect. The CCD converts individual points of light into individual electrical charges, which can be transformed into digital information. Digital photography has replaced film-based imaging as the preferred method of making photographs and video in the last two decades. The proliferation of digital cameras into other devices like mobile phones has been remarkably fast as well. But Boyle’s contribution goes farther than consumer and professional image making.
UPC bar code scanners use a CCD-based technology. The Hubble Space Telescope has a giant CCD. Digital photocopiers use CCD’s. Its ubiquity is difficult to overstate.
Boyle and Smith shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 2009 for their innovation, but not without controversy. Other researchers at Bell labs claimed to have been at least as responsible for applying the photoelectric effect to photography. But the Nobel Committee only honored Boyle and Smith, saying in their citation that the CCD “transformed photography.”
That seems like something of an understatement. It’s likely that every purchase you make and every photograph you view today was enabled by Boyle’s invention. The CCD transformed the world, the way we communicate and, ultimately, the way we live.
A special CCD used by NASA to record Ultra-violet light
Both photos via WikiCommons
Boyle, who died May 7th at 86, invented the digital eye behind the lens of that protester’s camera and behind the lens of every digital camera on the planet, the charge-coupled device or CCD. Boyle worked at Bell labs after earning his doctorate at Montreal’s McGill University. In 1969, working alongside George E. Smith, Boyle figured out how to harness a physical phenomenon first explained by Einstein.
When light hits a metal surface, a small amount of current runs through the metal. This phenomenon is called the photoelectric effect. The CCD converts individual points of light into individual electrical charges, which can be transformed into digital information. Digital photography has replaced film-based imaging as the preferred method of making photographs and video in the last two decades. The proliferation of digital cameras into other devices like mobile phones has been remarkably fast as well. But Boyle’s contribution goes farther than consumer and professional image making.
UPC bar code scanners use a CCD-based technology. The Hubble Space Telescope has a giant CCD. Digital photocopiers use CCD’s. Its ubiquity is difficult to overstate.
Boyle and Smith shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 2009 for their innovation, but not without controversy. Other researchers at Bell labs claimed to have been at least as responsible for applying the photoelectric effect to photography. But the Nobel Committee only honored Boyle and Smith, saying in their citation that the CCD “transformed photography.”
That seems like something of an understatement. It’s likely that every purchase you make and every photograph you view today was enabled by Boyle’s invention. The CCD transformed the world, the way we communicate and, ultimately, the way we live.
A special CCD used by NASA to record Ultra-violet light
Both photos via WikiCommons
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