"The camera on our cellular phones is already a technological wonder. Now how about a marble-sized video camera? This camera is so small it can fit into a wristwatch. And it is packed with nifty features and can be used for PC videoconferencing and security cameras.
The
inventor of this camera-on-a-chip technology is a Filipino who works at Lucent
Technologies’ Bell Labs in the United States. For this invention, Marc
Loinaz received in 1999 an award given by the Tenth Annual Discover Magazine
Awards for Technological Innovation. His invention edged out the Rio
PMP300 MP3 player (a portable player for MO3-encoded digital music) in the
personal entertainment category.
Marc
joined Bell Labs in 1995 and started working on a one-chip digital video camera
in 1996. His team came up with a demonstration unit in 1997 and
introduced it to the public in 1998.
The
camera-on-a-chip approach is based on the same CMOS (complementary metal oxide
semiconductor) technology found in today’s computer chips. It produced
real-time video images that could equal the quality of images produced by
camcorders, which rely on a handful of non-CMOS chips.
The
camera works by focusing light through a lens on a chip containing 100,000
sensors, each one-fifth the diameter of a human hair. Hardware on the
chip processes the image, adjusts the color, and smoothes out imperfections.
Besides
requiring less space, CMOS cameras use less power than traditional CCD
(charge-coupled devices) cameras. – Bato Balani"
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