How did a space-age invention become ubiquitous in today’s digital imaging landscape? Learn all about it here in our latest podcast, featuring pioneers of photography and digital imaging. 

In 1993, noted physicist and engineer Eric Fossum led the invention of the CMOS active-pixel image sensor as part of his work for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Then, as part of JPL’s mandate to seek commercial and consumer applications for emerging technologies, he was active in the transfer of the CMOS sensor’s “camera-on-a-chip” technology to industry. 

In our informative conversation with Professor Fossum, he makes distinctions between solid state CCDs and his more efficient CMOS sensor that would come to dominate the marketplace. To transform high-level science into layman’s terms, he uses the analogy of a bucket brigade collecting rain on a football field.

In a similar down-to-earth fashion, we touch on metaphysical issues like wave particle duality, and how this is demonstrated every time light enters a camera and you take a picture with your phone.

Join us to marvel at the wonders of science amid fun food references—from the way deep space radiation degrades CCD chips so they start to act like Swiss cheese, to the synergies between high-level scientific measurements and delicatessen lunch meats, both marks of a creative scientist and visionary educator.

Guest: Eric Fossum

Above photograph © John Sherman Photography, https://jshermanphoto.com/

For more information on our guest, see:
https://blogd7.bhphotovideo.com/explora/podcasts/photography/camera-on-a-chip-eric-fossums-invention-of-the-cmos-image-sensor

Stay Connected:
Eric Fossum Website: https://ericfossum.com/
Eric Fossum Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Fossum
Eric Fossum at the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame: https://www.invent.org/inductees/eric-r-fossum
Eric Fossum at Dartmouth Engineering: https://engineering.dartmouth.edu/community/faculty/eric-fossum
Eric Fossum bio from the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering: https://qeprize.org/winners/eric-fossum
Eric Fossum’s 2021 Emmy Award in Tech and Engineering https://www.nhbr.com/dartmouth-professor-wins-emmy-award-for-image-sensor-technology/

Subscribe here

Camera on a Chip: Eric Fossum's Invention of the CMOS Image Sensor

The B&H Photography Podcast: Join us every other week for a conversation with insightful and entertaining guests. From gear and technique to history, science and art, we discuss the issues most important to the contemporary photographer.