A Look At The Very First Digital Camera For Home Users

Today anybody that owns a computer system also owns, or has daily access to a digital camera. Let's face it, in this day and age one can take a small sum of money to a camera shop and walk away with a pretty nice digital camera with a variety of accessories that make regular cameras simply a waste of time.

But lets remember that this has not always been the case. For example, try and think back ten years into the past. A lot of people did not even own a computer, let alone ever hear about a digital camera. You see, even though digital cameras have dropped tremendously in price over the past several years, the fact remains that they are relatively new electronic devices with a very short history attached to them.

The very first digital camera developed specifically towards home users was released in May 1994 from a computer company that released many products over the years that became great successes. That particular company that released the world's first consumer digital camera was Apple computer, and the first digital camera for home users was called the QuickTake 100, named after the file format of the photographs taken with the camera.

Weighing in at around one pound, and priced at over $600, the QuickTake 100 was considered by many tech experts at the time as a wonderful piece of technology. The unit, which looked a lot like a pair of binoculars was quite cumbersome compared to today's digital cameras.

The QuickTake did have an LCD display, but not one for displaying pictures with. Instead, it was a very simple LCD display that displayed how much memory was available for storing photos. Speaking of memory, the QuickTake has the ability to store eight 640 * 480 photographs. Pretty lame compared to today's standards. The fact that the memory was built into the unit and not upgradeable was another downfall of the camera. The camera did have a built in flash that allowed the camera to be used both indoors and outdoors, but the memory limitations of the device did not really allow the system to be a replacement for regular film cameras.

Something funny about the first digital camera was that when it was first released, it was a Macintosh only accessory. This means that unlike every one of today's digital cameras, the camera was not initially compatible with Windows based PCs because of the lack of the necessary serial port. A Windows version of the camera was later made however to deal with demand for the lone product.

While the very first digital camera is just barely over a decade old, it looks incredibly hideous compared to the latest and greatest digital cameras of today. Take another look at your current digital camera, and try to imagine how ugly it will look compared to the digital cameras of the future.