Kodak Wins Emmy for Contributions to Camcorder Market

NEW YORK, Oct. 17, 2001 -- Eastman Kodak Co. received an Emmy Award for its role in the development of the consumer camcorder from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), which named Hitachi, JVC, Matsushita, and Sony as corecipients. Kodak was recognized for its pioneering work in developing image sensors with integral color filter arrays, which allowed a single solid-state sensor to produce a color image.

Today's consumer camcorders use a charge-coupled device (CCD) to convert light into electrical signals. The first CCDs, developed in the 1960s and early 1970s, were monochrome image sensors. To generate a color image, a camera needed three monochrome sensors with a prism beam splitter, or a single sensor with a rotating color wheel in front of it, to separate the light into its color components before it reached the CCD, resulting in color video cameras that were too large and expensive for consumers.

Kodak researchers were the first to conceive of fabricating color filters directly on top of the individual pixels of a solid-state image sensor, a revolutionary idea that required developing color filter fabrication technology compatible with the CCD semiconductor fabrication processes. Kodak researchers developed both the required fabrication processes and the preferred color filter array patterns. CCDs using integral color filters began to replace tube sensors in the mid-1980s. This transition played a major role in enabling widespread availability of miniature, low-cost, high-quality camcorders.

Kodak's Image Sensor Solutions division (ISS) is a leading provider of CCD and CMOS image sensors into worldwide markets including medical and scientific imaging, digital photography and industrial and remote-sensing applications.