Photos: The history of the digital camera

The end of film?
The first commercial CCD camera was developed by Fairchild in 1976. The MV-101 was used to inspect Procter & Gamble products. The following year Konica introduced the C35-AF, the world's first compact point-and-shoot autofocus camera. But the filmless age was kickstarted on 25 August 1981, when Sony demonstrated the first camera to bear the name Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera).

Not strictly a digital camera, the Mavica was actually an analogue television camera. It stored pictures on two-inch floppy disks called Mavipaks, that could hold up to fifty colour photos for playback on a television or monitor. CCD size was 570x490 pixels on a 10x12mm chip. The light sensitivity of the sensor was ISO 200 and the shutter speed was fixed at 1/60 second. It ran off AA batteries.