IT SEEMED a simple enough assignment 鈥� to research the history of digital photography. As a journalist, the subject is close to my heart. The camera is as much a tool of my trade as the personal computer, the telephone and the reporter鈥檚 notebook. I have always had a passion for photography, and I assumed that others would be sufficiently enthralled by the camera鈥檚 extraordinary recent metamorphosis to write it all down.
I was wrong. The history of digital photography, one of the most remarkable technological developments in living memory, is rapidly being forgotten and nobody seems to care. This is a tragedy.
For one thing, the birth and growth of what is now a must-have gadget is a fascinating story. The first commercial electronic camera system able to record and transmit still video images was tested at the Los Angeles Olympic games in 1984 by Japanese camera company Canon. The pictures it took were published the next day in a Japanese newspaper. The experiment worked so well that Canon decided to put the camera on the market.
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The idea failed miserably. While newspapers loved the fact that the images could be sent anywhere at high speed, the rest of us were unimpressed by their low quality and the fact that you had to view them on a television. The world was not yet ready for electronic images.
Another reason to lament the lack of historical perspective is that, without it, we can lose a proper sense of technological change. It is easy to think of the history of technology as a kind of conveyor belt where each development builds on the successes of its predecessor. But the real reasons for a product鈥檚 success are usually far more complex and enlightening. New ideas compete for survival in a ruthless environment. Those that survive are rarely the best, merely the best at outdoing the competition. Microsoft鈥檚 computer operating system is regarded by most experts as technically inferior to many of its competitors, but it dominates the marketplace because of the company鈥檚 business strategies. Given how the growth of computing has been so extensively archived, it is unthinkable that future software manufacturers will forget this lesson.
鈥淚n Japan, digital cameras are already dying out in favour of cellphones with built-in cameras鈥�
But there is a real danger that future makers of digital cameras will forget the crucial change that made the spread of this technology possible: the widespread ownership of home computers in the mid-1990s, which allowed people to access and store pictures easily. Other important changes include the arrival of cheap high-quality printers allowing us to print the images, and the expansion of the internet enabling us to share them. Digital cameras would never have become popular without this technological infrastructure.
Why have archivists been so reluctant to record all this? Some historians argue it is too soon to begin studying such a recent development. Then why have the histories of the internet and personal computing been so studiously documented? Does the world idolise certain technologies at the expense of others?
That, it seems, is exactly what happens. 鈥淢ost technological changes are simply forgotten,鈥� concedes
David Edgerton, professor of the history of science and technology at Imperial College London. In the interwar years, for example, the rapid evolution of aircraft was widely documented as a world-changing development. 鈥淚t was written about much in the same way as the internet is today,鈥� says Edgerton. But other technological success stories were largely forgotten, such as the development of silicon carbide as a material for tools, which fundamentally changed the nature of manufacturing. But surely there is plenty of time to record a technological revolution that in many ways is still happening? Rodger Carter, the editor of the website , who ploughs a lonely furrow in researching the history of digital cameras, says two factors may make this difficult. The first is the fantastic rate at which they have evolved. Ten years ago digital cameras were owned by only a few people; five years later they were taking the world by storm. And today, in countries like Japan, they are already dying out in favour of cellphones with built-in cameras. This rate of change across hundreds of different markets and cultures across the world is hard enough to keep track of in real time. It will be even harder in retrospect.
The second factor is the role of the internet. Consumer electronics companies use the internet rather than printed brochures to make information about products available to the public. 鈥淭he trouble is that when the product becomes obsolete, the companies remove the information,鈥� says Carter.
The key lesson is this: if we don鈥檛 learn from history, we will inevitably repeat our mistakes. The producers of many emerging technologies, such as hydrogen-powered cars and video telephones, face a problem similar to the one that initially held back digital cameras 鈥� the lack of an infrastructure to allow people to use them. They have much to learn from the history of digital photography 鈥� if they can find it recorded anywhere.