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Technology & Innovation —

People Changing the World

You’ve probably never heard of them, yet they’ve changed your life, says Frederick E. Allen of the latest innovators inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
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What’s the Latest Development?

Frederick E. Allen says Steven Sasson, Eric Fossum, Joseph Woodland, and Bernard Silver have changed your life in ways that affect you just about every day, yet you probably don’t know their names. They are among the latest inventors inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Sasson invented the digital camera, Fossum invented the “camera on a chip” that is now in 90% of all cell phones, and Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver developed the very first bar code scanning system.

What’s the Big Idea?

When dealing with doubters remember people like Sasson, who invented the digital camera. In his acceptance remarks, Sasson described how when he showed his unwieldy first camera around Kodak, people saw the future destroyer of the photographic film business as “interesting” but wondered why anyone would ever want to see their pictures on a screen.

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