History of digital photography dates back to early 19th century when the American Civil War took place. The technology used in a digital camera is very similar to the technology that is used to record television images. The first video tape recorder (VTR) was invented in 1951, which captured live images from television cameras and saved the information onto magnetic tape. This was done by converting the captured live images or information into digital or electrical pulses. A Charged Coupled Device (CCD) is used by both television and digital cameras for sensing light and intensity.

In 1960s, NASA used digital technology to in their space probes to send digital images of moon back to earth, that is, they converted analog signals to digital signals. A student of Stanford University invented a videodisk camera in 1963, which can not only take a photograph but also can store the image on a disk for several minutes. This is considered to be the predecessor of digital photography. Government used digital imaging for spying satellites.

With the advent of digital technology, in the mid-70, Kodak decided to work on film less technology. They invented solid-state image sensors, which can convert light to digital images. Similarly, Texas Instruments and Sony also decided to use film less technology and it was Texas Instruments who got a patent for film less electronic camera in the year 1972.

In the digital camera introduced by Sony, images were first recorded onto a mini disc and were later put into a video reader, which can be connected to a television monitor or a color printer.

The first digital cameras for the use of consumers, which worked with a home computer via a serial cable, were the Apple QuickTake 100 camera, the Kodak DC40 camera, the Casio QV-11, and Sony’s Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera.

Kinko’s and Microsoft collaborated with Kodak in order to create digital image-making software similar to Adobe Photoshop to help add digital images to documents. IBM collaborated with Kodak to make an internet-based network image exchange. However, it was Hewlett-Packard, which manufactured the first color inkjet printers that complemented the new digital camera images.

During mid-80, CDs were entering the market. This also helped a lot in digital photography as we are now able to store digital images in the CDs.