Mondo Knows Facts

The CCD image sensor was invented in 1969

Willard Boyle and George Smith sketched a charge transfer device at Bell Labs in an hour and saw its camera use The charge coupled device moves packets of charge across a silicon surface by shifting voltages on a row of electrodes. Boyle and Smith were working on semiconductor memory when they realised the same structure could capture an image. The first electronic still camera using a CCD followed in 1975, and the two men shared a Nobel Prize in 2009. It sits in Mondo's technology collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

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Nobel Prize

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Tags: sensors, cameras, silicon

The CCD image sensor was invented in 1969: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Willard Boyle and George Smith sketched a charge transfer device at Bell Labs in an hour and saw its camera use. The figure is taken from Nobel Prize, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a technology fact?
Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.