Philippe Kahn did not manufacture the first real cellphone with an integrated camera. But he was able to cobble together a Motorola StarTAC, a Toshiba laptop, a Casio QV-10 digital camera and a rat's nest of cables inside of a hospital in Santa Clara, California, to capture the first picture of his newborn daughter, Sophie.
The date was June 11, 1997, but the work to capture that moment of life came months before and involved a home server, coding an automatic notification system to thousands of email accounts and a fortuitous StarTAC speakerphone kit that could deliver a 320 x 240 image at 1,200 baud, hands-free. He also had a wife, tech entrepreneur Sonia Lee, that was very supportive throughout the whole process.
After years in the wilderness trying to convert this mess into something more convenient and a little more familiar to us, Kahn found his success first in Japan. With help from Sharp and carrier J-Phone, the Camera-Phone came to life in 1999. One thing le d to another and in 2002, Sprint and Casio worked with Kahn's and Lee's new company, LightSurf, to produce the first camera-phone in the US.
Kahn has been logging this anniversary with some interviews and his own thoughts during his roller coaster. We have links to an article from San Jose's The Mercury News and Kahn's big blog piece in the source bar below this article. Also, check out the video dramatization from Conscious Minds:
Image: Philippe Kahn
Source: The "Camera-Phone" is 20 years old today
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