It is necessary to distinguish between "electric photography" and "digital photography". In traditional photography, the image is "captured" chemically by modifying molecules. Electric photography "captures" images as electric impulses; "digital photography" is a type of electric photography in which images are coded as numbers. For example, the simplest option is when you code a black dot as a "0" and a white dot as a "1".
How to convert light in electrical impulses using "selenium" was described in 1873. Thus, in a sense, electric photography was described more than a century ago, but only in 1907 did Russian physicist Boris Rosing build the cathode ray tube that would serve as basis for practical electric photography.
An electric photography camera was built by another Russian, Vladimir K. Sworkyn in 1934 (the basis of modern television).
The image could be transmitted but not recorded, albeit the technology for recording electromagnetic signals already existed in Germany.
In 1951 a recorder of electric images was built in the USA and in the 1960's the first digitalizations of images were developed for space exploration and military activities: digital photography is much older that usually realized.
However, a commercial digital camera was not marketed until 1991: the Kodak DCS, actually a Japanese Nikon F3 camera with a 1.3 Megapixel sensor. Soon the Japanese dominated the market and the 21st century has seen a tremendous expansion in brands, a great reduction in price and an increase rate of one Megapixel per year in the decade after the first camera entered the market.
In 2004 digital cameras are massed-produced and 8 megapixel models are available for around US$1000.
It is unlikely that chemical photography will disappear, but digital photography will probably dominate the market and, in the future, improve in quality to emulate or even surpass chemical photography.
Julian Monge - Nájera / State Distance Education University (UNED), Costa Rica /
