Innovators behind the Evolution of Modern Cameras: A Quantitative Analysis of Patents on Image Sensors

Abstract

This article classifies and analyses the innovations and inventions that were affected in cameras with Charged-Coupled Device (CCD) and Active Pixel Sensors (APS) image sensors. While modern cameras allow greater freedom in image construction and re-construction, it also offers an enlarged scope for creating suitable elemental aesthetics for taking pictures or recording scenes. It has numerous advantages over the cathode ray tube cameras facilitating its use by a large number of people around the world. Modern cameras have evolved in a sustained manner over the years with results that continue to be experienced in novel ways in a range of utility areas. Among its many forms, the smart lenses embedded unobtrusively in state-of-the art smart phones operating in conjunction with the associated software produce quick and highly detailed images that compares only too well with broadcast cameras. A whole host of social media platforms, television broadcasts and online subscription programmes cannot do without the crucial pixel inputs from modern cameras. Insights gained from history and the subsequent inventions, technological progress as well as development and modifications affected in modern cameras over time have added further significance to the area. This article outlines the innovations in the area of modern cameras that has focused on recording of pictures for entertainment and communication by analysing the patenting trends from the year 1984 to 2019.The reason that patenting trends after 2019 have not been considered for analysis owes to the paucity of data chiefly because of the huge dip in technological breakthroughs for image sensor development.