Photos: The history of the digital camera

The digital age!
And there we have it. Although compacts were appearing in strange shapes, such as the Pentax EI-C90, which split into two sections, the basic form factor was laid down for today's multi-megapixel monsters -- roughly the same size as the tape cassette Steve Sasson used to record one grainy image (pictured).

Camera phones and CMOS sensors appeared in 1997, while megapixel counts are constantly climbing. The forthcoming Hasselblad H3D II will boast a gobsmacking 39 megapixels. How far we've come. -Rich Trenholm