Digitization British scientists Nobel Prizes
By: Thomas Unger
few days ago were announced the Nobel Prize for Science this year. Among them are biologists and physicists, today we will address one of the last. The physics prize was divided in two, half Chinese-English physicist Charles Kuen Kao, called the father of fiber optics. The other half will be shared by Sterling Canadian physicist Willard Boyle and the American physicist George Elwood Smith, for having invented the CCD (charge coupled device) that has made possible the digitization of images, an essential element of the multimedia digital era.
PRINCIPLE
physicists 40 years ago of the famous Bell Labs * decided to make a phone with TV screen. It was a simpler way and compact to capture and transmit an image and a memory for storage. It was in 1969 that Boyle and Smith, who worked on this project, they built a semiconductor that could capture, transmit and store data. They realized immediately that, using the photoelectric effect (conversion of light into electricity) could capture images. Thus was born the CCD.
Today millions of video cameras and are manufactured with high-capacity small CCD. Each of them is thousands of times more efficient than the one created 40 years ago, but the principle on which work is the same: the current CCD image making through pixels, tiny photoelectric cells sensitive to light. The voltage fluctuates with the intensity of light and is recorded digitally. This flow of information that describes the variation of light is recorded by the current fluctuations which are stored in a memory.
This is the process which describes a screen of pixels, each with its record of light intensity and to assemble the box. The CCD was first manufactured commercially in 1974 by the Fairchild Company, and was 100 pixels wide by 100 high, in total 10 000 (ten kilopíxeles). A few years later the engineer Kazuo Iwama ** Sony CCD succeeded in manufacturing a large capacity and in 1986 introduced the first digital format. The video was not compressed and required a lot width bandwidth to handle the information. Iwama, who should have been part of this Nobel, died in 1982, but his tomb is a CCD in recognition of his contribution.
COLOR CCD was improved and quickly found a wide variety of applications. Unlike our retina or the film, the CCD may be sensitive to infrared light and ultraviolet, which can be used for night vision cameras and, as do certain insects, observe the world in the ultraviolet. This ability to record at frequencies beyond the visible light has revolutionized astronomy and has allowed a new view of the universe. In this wide variety of applications implementing the CCD is always to capture images, either still or moving, record them and store them so that they can then be reproduced.
To replace photographic film, which eventually made, the CCD lacked the ability to capture color. To distinguish colors, as does our retina, separate the three basic components: red, green and blue, and measure the rate at which captured produce color. For this purpose the CCD recorded separately, either by filters or prisms, the intensity of red, green and blue, making digital information is stored. Always is the same principle, a process of information, a long line of data describing what has captured the CCD display point by point. Thus, a camera has 4 megapixels (4 million), three color intensity data for each pixel and its original color mixture occurs. DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
A typical commercial digital camera has a small CCD, which is less than 8 mm x 6 mm, with about 4 million pixels. To this must be borne in mind that a CCD captures approximately 70% of the light it receives, making it much more efficient than photographic film which has been replaced, which captures only about 2% of incident light in it.
The efficiency of the CCD has create a variety of cameras, they have found a wide variety of uses. From small cameras, the webcam that allows video conferencing cameras for 3G mobile phones, to the Hubble Space Telescope using some type of CCD.
In the case of astronomy, even the most powerful telescope or the space that is out of the atmosphere can not directly capture the faint image of galaxies that are millions of light years away. However, the CCD, with its high sensitivity, an exhibition of several hours galaxies has captured more than 10 billion light years away.
FILE
Nobel received by Boyle and Smith physicists only partly reflects the importance of the invention for which the contribution was rewarded. Today the image is part of our massive digital archive. This includes the ability to transmit, store on optical disk (CD), process, compress and manipulate it with different programs. The digital TV transition is made possible by the CCD. In addition to the proliferation of cameras, from surveillance to the highest resolution used in astronomy and intended to replace the film in the cinema, all used as "retina" charge-coupled device that converts light into a current whose fluctuations are recorded as information digital.
From the appearance of the CCD, and one version which is the scanner, our ability to retrieve, store and archive images has increased by several orders of magnitude. It would not be possible to imagine the multimedia digital age without the tiny device invented 40 years ago, now produces tens of millions each year.
Journal of Trade October 20, 2009
bitch Well go ... less than 2 weeks claimed bronze in the overall global competition and days later died in a car accident. 
