In 1971, physicist Michael Tompsett, a former researcher at the English Electric Valve Co. (now e2V), showed how the CCD (originally developed by AT&T Bell Labs) could be used as an imaging device. Three years later, Bryce Bayer (working for Kodak) showed how color images could be captured by applying a checkerboard filter of red, green, and blue to an array of pixels on an area CCD array.
Work on active pixel, or CMOS, image sensors dates back to 1967 in Dr. Gene Weckler’s research, but CMOS sensors were not widely adopted for 30 years due in part to the variability of the CMOS manufacturing process. Today, many CMOS image sensor manufacturers widely tout the performance of such devices as comparable to that of CCDs.
