The first digicam

AP

The photo at right is the most compelling example I've seen in a while of how technology has progressed, and shrunk.

That's Kodak engineer Steven Sasson showing off the very first working digital camera, which he built in 1975, alongside a contemporary EasyShare One model.

According to an interesting AP story on Sasson's invention and its loooong path to wide market acceptance, the prototype took 23 seconds to record a 0.01-megapixel, black-and-white image onto a cassette tape -- and another 23 seconds for a playback unit to retrieve it before it appeared on a TV screen.