From Photons to Bits

DEC 01, 1992

A good 35‐mm color negative has the equivalent of 300 million binary bits of information. If you can capture all that visual information in digital form, you can retrieve or transmit it in an instant and manipulate it at will.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881326

Rajinder P. Khosla

There are many ways to record optical images. One might describe Paleolithic cave paintings as the earliest imaging technology. As significant as they probably were to those who made and lived with them, these depictions were limited by the artist’s skill and time, and only persons who entered the cave could benefit from them. It was not until the coming of the printing press that a particular image could be made available to a wide audience. But even then one was still dependent on the artistic skill and subjective vision of the individual artist.

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More about the Authors

Rajinder P. Khosla. Microelectronics Technology Division of Eastman Kodak's Electronic Imaging Platform Center, Rochester, New York.