2021 Lucie Awards Honoree: STEVEN SASSON – Spotlight/Visionary award
To be perfectly honest I had no interest in photography as I was growing up in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Throughout high school, I had developed an intense interest in electronics and was a major distraction to my parents’ as I collected all manner of discarded TV’s and radios from around the neighborhood so I could salvage electronic components for my home projects. It was with these scavenged parts and those purchased on my frequent subway trips to “Radio Row” in Manhattan, that I designed and built radio receivers, stereo amplifiers and transmitters in my parent’s basement. I obtained my amateur radio license as a teenager and further challenged my parents by putting up large antennas on the roof of the family’s rather small row house. It was my transmitting activity that got me in trouble with the neighbors as I often interfered with their TV reception. My parents were remarkably patient with the middle child of the three boys they were raising in the city.
After attending Brooklyn Technical high school, it was off to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy N.Y. In 1973 I graduated with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in electrical engineering. It was during these summers during the college years (’68 –’73), I had several jobs that included being draftsman for a consulting engineer in New Jersey and a “runner” on Wall Street (before Email!).
After graduation from RPI I joined the Eastman Kodak Company as an electrical engineer. It was not an obvious choice of destinations for me as this company was not known as a magnet for electrical/electronic technologists. But the company expressed an interest in getting more electronic expertise due to the fact that more of the component costs of conventional cameras was being taken up with electronic subsystems (exposure controls, on camera flash systems and automatic film advance controllers). I was lucky enough to begin working in the applied research laboratory of the equipment arm of the company. There I was surrounded with many interdisciplinary technologists investigating various interesting areas of photographic science and technology. Very early on I became engaged in a number of early digital imaging projects. The most significant of these was the design and construction of the first digital still camera and playback system in 1975. I was challenged to try to explore a new type of imaging device called a Charge Coupled device. I thought if I could capture the light induced charge pattern from this device and store it electronically, I could replace the need for photographic film. Although that end goal was not well appreciated within the company a significant number of the company’s management patiently had their images captured and displayed during a series of demonstration meetings of this system during the first half of 1976.
After receiving a patent on this concept (1978) I proceeded to work in the emerging field of “digital imaging” and continued to do so for the rest of my 35-year career at the company. Looking back on it I was privileged to be involved with the development of some of the earliest DSLRs and photographic thermal dye printing systems that play such a large role in our present photographic world. Although I had received ten US patents in this field over that time period, I did not appreciate the role they would play until the twilight of my career. In 2004 I was asked to help manage a series of high-profile patent disputes that Kodak engaged in with a number of significant electronic industry competitors involving evolution digital camera technology. It is with a little embarrassment that I must admit that I spent the last few years at Kodak not in a laboratory but in court rooms testifying to the validity of Kodaks patents in the area of digital cameras (some of which were my own patents).
Throughout this adventure I have had the love and support of my wife Cynthia and our two children Michael and Jennifer. Although I have been privileged to have been recognized for my work on several occasions, I am still in search of being considered “cool” by my kids. Maybe this will do the trick.