Skip to main content
Ingenium Logo

You are leaving IngeniumCanada.org

✖


This link leads to an external website that Ingenium does not control. Please read the third-party’s privacy policies before entering personal information or conducting a transaction on their site.

Have questions? Review our Privacy Statement

Vous quittez IngeniumCanada.org

✖


Ce lien mène à un site Web externe qu'Ingenium ne contrôle pas. Veuillez lire les politiques de confidentialité des tiers avant de partager des renseignements personnels ou d'effectuer une transaction sur leur site.

Questions? Consultez notre Énoncé de confidentialité

Ingenium The Channel

Langue

  • Français
Search Toggle

Menu des liens rapides

  • Ingenium Locations
  • Shop
  • Donate
  • Join
Menu

Main Navigation

  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners

Going Digital – The Charge-Coupled Device

This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.

Share
Jan 23, 2017
Categories
Engineering & Technology
Categories
Sciences
Media
Article
User profile image
By: Janis Nostbakken
Willard Boyle and George E. Smith

A mere hour or so of brainstorming at a blackboard one October afternoon in 1969 led to a revolutionary gizmo that spawned an entirely new industry. Nova Scotia-born Willard Boyle and his American colleague, George E. Smith, had put their heads together in Boyle’s office at Bell Labs in New Jersey to come up with a new kind of memory circuit for computers. The result was the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) which, as it turned out, proved much more useful for capturing images than for memory storage. Ideal for telescopes, CCDs transformed the world of astronomy and became the basis of the whole new realm of digital cameras, camcorders and scanners.

  • CCDs are ultra-sensitive image sensors that collect light, convert it to a charge, and then send out the signal as a digital image.
  • Boyle and Smith won many awards for their invention and shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In the words of the Nobel committee: “The CCD has provided new possibilities to visualize the previously unseen. It has given us crystal clear images of distant places in our universe as well as the depths of the oceans… These inventions may have had a greater impact on humanity than any others in the last half-century.”

Tags
Innovation Storybook
Author(s)
User profile image
Janis Nostbakken

Related Stories

A pair of bare metal ejection seats with no cushions or padding are mounted on a plywood base, placed beside a few cardboard boxes. Behind the seats, a camouflage-green helicopter is partially visible.

How a pair of ejection seats from the Avro CF-105 Arrow survived

Overhead shot of the reconstructed instrument with the control surface opened up, showing various wires and electronic modules located beneath.

Uncovering the secrets of the world’s first synthesizer (Part II)

Spliced image, from left to right: a seismometer on mars, a heap of red rhubarb stalks with green leaves, a copper roof of the Canaian Parliament

3 Things you should know about marsquakes, the value of urine, and the chemistry of rhubarb

A spliced photo, from left to right: Shaun the Sheep in front of a model of ESA’s European Service Module, a top view into a red bucket containing thousands of light-brown, rod-shaped pellets, and a toddler wearing a wool hat and wool sweater holds a grownup’s finger.

3 things you should know about why wool keeps us warm, and about its surprising uses in the garden and in space.

A Woolery Machine Company runway de-icing device in action at Cologne-Wahn airport, Cologne, West Germany. Anon., “Ancillary Review – Flame-throwing – On Ice.” The Aeroplane and Commercial Aviation News, 28 February 1963, 29.

Come on, PB, light my fire. Try to set the ice on fire: A peek at the American firm Woolery Machine Company and some of its ideas and products

Three images side by side: a toilet bowl expelling a cloud of droplets, a gloved hand holding a test tube containing a small plant, and an infrared view of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io showing spots of volcanic activity covering the moon.

3 things you should know about flushing the toilet, artificial photosynthesis, and volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon

Headshots of 33 women, showing the diversity of women in AI and Robotics

Women in AI & Robotics: An interview with Founder and CEO, Sheila Beladinejad

Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Sergeant Bob Electro caught in the act of saluting the commanding officer of RCAF Station Clinton, Group Captain John Gordon Mathieson, Clinton, Ontario. Anon., “Six-Year-Old Sergeant.” The North Bay Nugget, 7 January 1963, 15.

Dōmo arigatō, gunsō Electro, mata au hi made: The electronic adventures of Royal Canadian Air Force / Canadian Armed Forces Sergeant Bob Electro

The 10-inch flight impact simulator of the National Research Council of Canada at some point during its long career, Uplands / Ottawa, Ontario. NRC.

A great Canadian success story you should know about: A brief look at the National Research Council of Canada flight impact simulators donated to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Part 3

The 3.75- / 3.5-inch flight impact simulator of the National Research Council of Canada at some point during its long career, Uplands / Ottawa, Ontario. NRC.

A great Canadian success story you should know about: A brief look at the National Research Council of Canada flight impact simulators donated to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Part 2

The 10-inch flight impact simulator of the National Research Council of Canada at some point during its long career, Uplands / Ottawa, Ontario. NRC.

A great Canadian success story you should know about: A brief look at the National Research Council of Canada flight impact simulators donated to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Part 1

A rear view of a person wearing a yellow coat and backpack in winter, a close-up view of bright red poinsettias with small yellow central flowers.

Two things you should know about the science of wind chill, and the Orion spacecraft's selfies.

Footer

About The Channel

The Channel

Contact Us

Ingenium
P.O. Box 9724, Station T
Ottawa ON K1G 5A3
Canada

613-991-3044
1-866-442-4416
contact@IngeniumCanada.org
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Channel

    • Channel Home
    • About the Channel
    • Content Partners
  • Visit

    • Online Resources for Science at Home
    • Canada Agriculture and Food Museum
    • Canada Aviation and Space Museum
    • Canada Science and Technology Museum
    • Ingenium Centre
  • Ingenium

    • Ingenium Home
    • About Ingenium
    • The Foundation
  • For Media

    • Newsroom
    • Awards

Connect with us

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest Ingenium news straight to your inbox!

Sign Up

Legal Bits

Ingenium Privacy Statement

© 2023 Ingenium

Symbol of the Government of Canada
  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners