Charge-Coupled Device

Willard Boyle and George Smith, Bell Labs, USA, patent 3,792,322 of 1974. The light bucket that digitized imaging.

Overview

Bell Labs' 1969 semiconductor shift-register invention, patented 1974, moved charge packets as memory then, quickly, as light sensors. CCDs flew on Galileo and Hubble, capturing the famous Deep Field. Sony's 1981 Mavica and the 1990s camcorders built consumer imaging on it. Boyle and Smith shared the 2009 Nobel. CMOS sensors later took phones, but astronomy's faint-light buckets stay CCD. Digital imaging began as memory that learned to see.