CTA Centennial Part 6e: Platform Wars – Digital Photography

Say cheese!

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CTA (Consumer Technology Association), which started out as the RMA (Radio Manufacturers Association). This is the fifth in a series of essays exploring and celebrating CTA’s and our industry’s first century of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship, assembled from varying technology historical research and writings I have done over the course of 20-plus years, including from an annually updated industry history for CTA’s now-defunct Digital America, 20-plus years of CTA Hall of Fame inductee biographies, and numerous tech history articles for a variety of publications over the years.

Here are the previous chapters:

• Part 1 (1924-1929): Founding
• Herbert H. Frost: CTA’s “George Washington”
• Part 2 (1930-1945): David Sarnoff
• Part 3 (1946-1960): The TV Age
• Part 4 (1961-1974): The Sixties
• Jack Wayman, Our Industry’s Indispensable Exec
• Part 5a (1975-1985): Decade of Disruption – Home Video
• Part 5b (1975-1985): Decade of Disruption – Personal Audio
• Part 5c (1975-1985): Decade of Disruption – Personal Computing
• Part 5d (1975-1985): A Decade of Disruption – 1984 Phones It In
• Part 5e (1975-1985): A Decade of Disruption – 1984, The Sony Decision
• Part 6a (1985-2000): Platform Wars – Recording Media
• Part 6b (1985-2000): Platform Wars – Video Games
• Part 6c: Platform Wars – Airways (Part I)
• Part 6c (1985-2000): Platform Wars – Airways (Part II)
• Part 6d (1985-2000): Platform Wars – Compression

One of the ironies of the myriad format wars of the late 1980s and 1990s is that few of the physical media formats, even the successful ones at the time, have endured.

However, eight developments from the last 15 years of the 20th century have not only endured thus far into the 21st but formed the pillars that should support our industry for a long time to come. One is cellular networks (1), the beginnings of which we covered in Part 5d and again in Part 6c Part II, both linked above. Others include GPS (2), satellite TV and radio (3), which we covered in Part 6c I, linked above, and compression codecs (4), which we covered in our last chapter.

In this and subsequent chapters, we’ll deal with the other six foundational technologies that emerged in the last decade of the 20th century and continue to play major roles in our industry at present: digital photography (5), solid-state memory (6), DVD/Blu-ray (7), HDTV (8), wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, 9), and the internet, which obviously includes the World Wide Web (10).

First up:

Flash Memory

Simultaneous with the invention and development of the digital camera as well as the home PC and the advancement of the microchip came a more reliable digital memory standard than existing physical methodologies and formats such as magnetic, optical, magneto-optical, Bernoulli, et al. More practical, more reliable, and more durable, would be a digital memory standard designed expressly for storing digital data: a chip, what we refer to now as solid-state or, more colloquially, as flash memory.

And, just as all the other technologies we’ve explored in these chapters, flash memory didn’t just magically appear. Actual human beings – and two in particular – created the digital way we store all digital data. The first practical consumer application for solid-state memory – in fact, the driving force behind its development – was to create “digital film” for digital cameras, which is why I’m covering the development of flash memory here.

The first human responsible for the invention of flash memory, the person to acknowledge or thank each time you slide a flash memory card or thumb drive into a slot or USB jack, sync your music to a smartphone, or just save a file on your PC, is Dr. Fujio Masuoka.

And forgive me in advance for the memory tech terms and acronyms I’m about to toss about like confetti. I include them for the edification of those of you who understand the technology (which I admittedly don’t). For the rest of us: while “flash” memory sounds simple, I include the tech terms to edify how complicated, and sophisticated – “magical” – this foundational technology actually is.

Masuoka was born May 8, 1943, in Takasaki City, Gunma, Japan, the son of Shouji and Fuji. When he was 10, his mother encouraged him to study mathematics and hired a private teacher. By the time he was 12, Masuoka could master advanced mathematics. In high school, Masuoka concentrated on theory, believing that technology or electronics was done only by theoretical work. As a result of his work studying theory, Masuoka also developed a deep understanding of economics and law.

He earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Tohoku University in 1966, 1968, and 1971, respectively. Soon after graduating, Masuoka joined the Toshiba Research and Development Center in April 1971.

Three months into his new job, Masuoka’s boss, Dr. Yoshiyuki Takeishi, showed Masuoka Intel’s Ultraviolet Erasable Electrically Programmable Read Only Memory (UV EEPROM), which had been announced earlier that year. Masuoka studied this Intel technology for two months and discovered a new structure, a stacked-gate avalanche-injection type MOS read-only memory (SAMOS), which became Masuoka’s first patent in 1972.

Between 1972 and 1984, Masuoka made other significant memory breakthroughs, including a dynamic memory cell with a double poly-silicon structure. In 1977, he moved to Toshiba’s semiconductor division, where he developed 1 Mbit DRAM (dynamic random-access memory).

Masuoka moved to Toshiba’s memory product engineering division in 1980 and then to Toshiba’s memory design engineering division in 1984 to work on developing flash memory. He perfected and patented NOR flash memory, presented at the International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, and then progressed to 256 Kbit flash memory.

In April 1987, Masuoka returned to the Toshiba Research and Development Center, where he began to successfully develop more advanced NAND-type flash memory. Despite his breakthroughs, flash was not yet ready for commercialization. What slowed Masuoka down was not necessarily technology, but money.

In order to create and manufacture a commercial prefabricated 4 Mbit flash memory chip, Masuoka needed to develop a mask, which serves as a high-tech stencil to project the various circuit patterns on each layer of a microprocessor. Except, the cost to create a mask was higher than Toshiba initially was unwilling to invest.

Masuoka convinced Toshiba’s consumer electronics research executives that a 4 Mbit flash memory chip could be used to create a consumer-ready digital camera with the flash memory serving as “digital film.” With funding from the consumer electronics division, Masuoka continued his development and presented the 4 Mbit NAND-type flash memory at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in New York City in mid-February 1989.

For his foundational work on flash memory, Masuoka has been presented with numerous honors and awards in Japan including the inaugural Watanabe Prize in 1977 and the National Invention Award in 1980. In 2007, Masuoka was awarded the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon from Emperor Akihito.

Standardization

While Dr. Masuoka invented flash memory, Eli Harari, the founder of San Disc, is largely responsible for its practical use for digital photography and, by extension, other uses.

Harari was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1945. His parents came to Palestine from Poland in 1933 as a young couple as Nazism was on the rise in Germany. As a teen, Harari attended boarding school in England, then put himself through Manchester University. He painted houses in Beverly Hills during summer vacations to pay his tuition and graduated with honors with a B.S. in physics. Harari then earned a Ph.D. in solid state sciences from Princeton University under a research scholarship from the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

After graduation in 1973, the newly minted young physicist worked on space-borne electronics in early satellites at Hughes Microelectronics. In his spare time, he would visit Sears to check out consumer products and was soon dabbling in prototypes for new fishing rods, reflective flea collars, and self-illuminating screwdrivers. Harari’s “aha” moment came when his wife suggested he apply his physics expertise to invent new semiconductor memory devices.

From 1973 to 1983, Harari held research and management positions with Hughes Microelectronics, Intel, and Honeywell. In 1975 while at Hughes, he invented the industry’s first commercial floating-gate electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), a precursor to flash. That led to a job at Intel, where he was manager of the company’s Santa Clara Technology Development Center.

In 1983, he founded Waferscale Integration, a venture capital-funded startup in Silicon Valley, serving as the company’s president and chief executive officer until 1986 and as chairman and chief technical officer until 1988. Harari, however, got into a dispute with the board over strategy and direction and was forced out of the company he founded.

Instead of standing still, Harari recruited Indian immigrant Sanjay Mehrotra, a former memory chip designer he met at Intel, and former Hughes Microelectronics colleague Jack Yuan, a Taiwanese immigrant and chip process engineer. The three immigrants founded SanDisk in a two-room office in Santa Clara, CA.

At the time of SanDisk’s founding, Masuoka was just finalizing flash memory. Under Harari’s leadership, SanDisk’s small team of engineers invented a revolutionary concept they named “system flash,” which required a radically new flash memory chip architecture, tightly coupled to a dedicated intelligent controller. This combination overcame flash’s inherent deficiencies and led to the industry’s first flash-based solid-state drive (SSD). SSDs were able to mimic standard hard disk drives but were smaller, more power efficient, and more rugged since there were no moving parts.

Harari approached Kodak and offered to build flash memory cards for the photo giant’s new digital cameras. Kodak offered to fund the new company’s flash memory development effort in exchange for a three-year exclusive. But Harari turned Kodak down, believing in market forces and competition and not in growth being tied to an exclusive arrangement.

Instead, armed with funding from venture capitalists, AT&T, and Western Digital, SanDisk developed its first 4-megabit flash chips and dedicated controller chips, then outbid Intel, Texas Instruments, and Western Digital to grab IBM as its first customer.

To make this new technology appealing to consumers, Harari realized SanDisk had to dramatically reduce the cost of flash memory. The company’s engineers focused on shrinking the technology, inventing multi-level “cell” flash, which allowed more than the traditional one bit of data to be stored on each physical cell. Many of these innovations were adopted by and became the foundation of today’s flash memory products, resulting in the price of flash memory to consumers dropping by a factor of 50,000.

Harari also believed consumer markets would accelerate once industry-standard card formats were adopted. So SanDisk licensed its unique patents to competitors and invited industry giants such as Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba to participate in developing and promoting such standard card formats.

In addition to CompactFlash and SD cards, SanDisk invented the microSD card for mobile phones, the USB flash drive – the thumb drive – for replacing floppy disks and recordable CD, and embedded memory for the exploding mobile phone market.

In 1992, Harari arranged a $30 million investment from Seagate to develop solid-state drives, and the company went public on Nasdaq in 1995.

In 1999, when the total flash memory market totaled less than $1 billion, Harari predicted the flash memory market would reach the size of the hard disk drives and DRAM markets within a decade. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, Harari’s prediction came to fruition; the total flash memory market approached $25 billion in 2011 and is now expected to reach $163.413 billion by 2029.

Along with SanDisk co-founders Mehrotra and Yuan, Harari received the 2006 Reynold B. Johnson Data Storage Device Technology Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In 2008, he received the Global Semiconductor Alliance’s Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award, in 2009 received the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal recognizing his “leadership in the development and commercialization of flash memory technology,” and, in 2014, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama.

What’s a “Digital” Camera?

Now, finally, let’s talk about the device flash memory was invented for: digital cameras.

Oddly, the ability to electronically and then digitally capture video was a mature technology while electronically and then digitally capturing still images lagged far behind.

And, perhaps even more oddly, the development of digital photography in the 20th century would actually spell the demise of not only the entire consumer film photography industry, the consumer film business’ dominant vendor, Kodak, but even the standalone consumer digital camera itself in the 21st.

As related in Part 5a: Decade of Disruption – Home Video, Kodak’s Steve Sasson invented the digital camera in December 1975. But because it feared cannibalizing its dominant film business, Kodak – which did pioneering development of color megapixel CCD image sensors in the early 1980s – let others develop digital cameras.

The question was: what constituted a “digital” camera?

Sony was first in into the market with what was called then called a “filmless” camera with the Pro Mavica, the first commercial electronic still camera, in 1981, which recorded analog images much like a camcorder onto magnetic media – in Pro Mavica’s case, a proprietary two-inch floppy disc. Several other companies announced similar electronic still cameras, but these cameras were either too expensive or their images were of insufficient resolution – often both – to crack the consumer market.

Also in 1981, Dr. Levy Gerzberg founded Zoran, which created the first-ever processor for a consumer digital camera – a credit card-sized battery-backed digital camera system on a chip (SoC) dubbed COACH (Camera On A CHip). Zoran would eventually provide more than a third of all SoCs, digital imaging, and digital sound processing (DSP) chips for a wide variety of digital gear.

In the mid-1980s, several camera makers introduced multi-thousand dollar electronic still cameras for the professional market including Canon with its RC-701 in May 1986 and Nikon with its QC-1000C in September 1988. In October 1988, Sony unveiled a $650 consumer version of its Mavica, the MVC-C1 Hi Band VF Mavica, an analog still camera, not digital, that stored images on two-inch square discs. In September 1988, Fuji unveiled the DS-1P, the first electronic still camera that recorded images digitally on a 16 MB internal memory card developed with Toshiba, but the camera was never sold in the U.S.

But it’s arguable if any of these were true digital cameras.

In October 1988, Fuji introduced the DS-1P, the first camera to store images digitally, in RAM. Kodak’s senior project engineer and the chief designer of the company’s professional cameras, James E. McGarvey, led a team that developed the first digital SLR cameras, beginning in 1987, designed for government applications. This series of megapixel D-SLRs, eventually named the Hawkeye II, morphed into a commercial model, the Kodak Professional DCS (Digital Camera System), in May 1991.

Known as the DCS-100, this camera, a 1.3-megapixel CCD installed into a Nikon film camera body, is often cited as the first true commercially available digital SLR camera. It wasn’t exactly consumer-ready, however; priced at $20,000 to $25,000, the DCS-100 was sold only to well-heeled – and hardy – photojournalists, such as reporters covering the first Gulf War, who were forced to also lug around an 11-pound shoulder pack.

Electronic camera makers assumed their eventual consumer models would be connected to TV sets to create slide shows, not connected to computers. That assumption changed in 1987 when Letraset introduced Image Studio, the first image manipulation software. But Image Studio was designed only for the Apple Macintosh and handled only grayscale images. In 1990, Adobe released the first version of its now-standard photo manipulation software, PhotoShop, which handled color images. In many ways, however, both Image Studio and PhotoShop were applications in search of hardware, namely a true digital camera.

At the June Comdex in 1990, a small company called Dycam introduced the tall, thin, flat Model 1, the first consumer digital camera, priced at $995. Dycam licensed its technology to Logitech, which sold the camera as the Fotoman in 1991. However, the Dycam shot only in black & white and was adopted largely by insurance and real estate agents.

Kodak finally saw the consumer commercial possibilities of a digital camera connected to a computer and began working with Apple on a consumer version. On February 17, 1994, the Kodak-designed Apple QuickTake 100 was introduced at the Tokyo MacWorld Expo.

The QuickTake 100 looked more like a fancy pair of binoculars than a camera. It ran on three AA batteries and could store eight 640 x 480 full-color images in its internal solid-state memory or could be connected to a PC via a serial port connection. The Apple QuickTake 100 went on sale in the U.S. in May 1994 for Macintosh only – the Windows version arrived a month later – for less than $1,000, making it the first true consumer color digital camera. Kodak followed with its own version, the DC-40, the following April.

Advances in digital still cameras then followed fast and furious. In July 1995, Casio’s QV-10 became the first digital camera equipped with an LCD screen along with an optical viewfinder. Kodak’s DC-25 was the first digital camera to use a removable Compact Flash card in 1996. The first million (or mega) pixel models arrived in 1997, and each succeeding year saw nearly a million-pixel increase in resolution, along with USB connectivity and a variety of removable storage media options.

Cellcams

As we all now know, the digital camera would eventually be subsumed into cellphones and, even more eventually, smartphones. But the idea for merging a camera onto a cellphone came not from a cellphone maker but from a far more unlikely source – a consumer, software entrepreneur Philippe Kahn, and not as some prescient business idea but a true case of necessity being the mother of invention.

In June 1997, Kahn’s wife was in labor with the couple’s first child, and Kahn wanted to snap photos of the happy event to send to friends and family. While waiting in the hospital, Kahn started writing software code to facilitate transmitting photos from his cellphone then slipped out to a RadioShack for some soldering wire to connect a camera to a cellphone. A few hours later, he was snapping a picture of his newborn daughter, Sophie, with his bizarre contraption.

Kahn started shopping his slapdash cellcam to cellphone makers and carriers. He turned his picture-sending code into a software system, and then into a company called LightSurf. Kahn finished the software system, Picture-mail, which became the first mobile photo messaging solution in North America.

First came camera attachments you clipped onto a cellphone equipped with photo software. It took three years before the first integrated cellphone/camera, the Sharp J-SH04, hit the Japanese market in November 2000. It took another two years before Atsushi Kodera, Sanyo Fisher’s wireless communications division group vice president and general manager, successfully led the effort to develop the Sanyo SCP-5300 ($400), the first cellcam available in the U.S., which went on sale in December 2002 from Sprint.

These first cell cams, of course, took really low-resolution photos – VGA, about half a megapixel. It would take developments in the 21st century in both digital photo imaging sensors, mobile lens technology development, and a certain mobile phone introduction in 2007 that launched the modern digital image capture era ¬– and the demise of the entire film camera business, Kodak, and even the consumer digital camera itself.

As per usual, to be continued.

See also: CTA Centennial Part 6d: Century’s End – Compression