Sean Lahman: Evolution preceded revolution in digital cameras
Steve Jobs didn’t invent the MP3 player. The Wright Brothers weren’t the first to fly. And the incandescent light bulb had been around in one form or another for 50 years before Thomas Edison came up with his version.
We tend to think of inventors as people who create things that are entirely new, but that’s rarely the case. More often, innovation comes from a series of smaller, incremental improvements.
“That was certainly true in my case,” said James McGarvey, who was honored last week as the Distinguished Inventor of the Year, an award given annually by the Rochester Intellectual Property Lawyers Association.
McGarvey was recognized for his work to invent and commercialize digital single lens reflex cameras (D-SLRs) at Eastman Kodak Co. “The first D-SLR was not a big invention,” he said. “It was a series of small inventions.”
The challenge began when a government client approached McGarvey, asking if he could put Kodak’s one megapixel sensor — used in high-end video cameras — in a 35mm camera body for some sort of covert operation.
“Because I was an avid photographer and a SLR user, I knew how a film camera worked,” he said. “I asked myself, ‘What do I need to make something that works the same way?’ ”
In 1988, McGarvey hand-delivered the top-secret camera (I’m imagining it in a case handcuffed to his wrist) and never saw it again.
He ended up building three more prototypes the next two years and by 1990 began showing those cameras to news photographers at trade shows for feedback. “The reaction was intense,” McGarvey said.
McGarvey was granted patent No. 4,916,476 for that first design, the first of many he received.
The first digital SLR — the Kodak Professional Digital Camera System (DCS) — hit the market in 1991, and was an instant hit.
“The impact of Jim’s work cannot be overstated,” said Kenneth Parulski, chief scientist at Kodak. “Some of the world’s most famous photos, from Super Bowl touchdowns to the 9/11 tragedy, were captured by sports and press photographers using D-SLR cameras that Jim designed.”
McGarvey made tremendous strides in a short period of time, and by the mid-1990s had implemented almost all of the features present in current-day digital cameras. “The only significant addition in the last 15 years has been the ability to shoot movies,” he said.
Sean Lahman: Evolution preceded revolution in digital cameras
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