In the spring of 1957, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS, now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST) computer pioneer Russell Kirsch asked, "What would happen if computers could look at pictures?" and helped start a revolution in information technology. Kirsch and his colleagues at NBS, who had developed the nation's first programmable computer, the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC), created a rotating drum scanner and programming that allowed images to be fed into it. The first image scanned was a head-and-shoulders shot of Kirsch's three-month-old son Walden.
They used the computer to extract line drawings, count objects, recognize types of characters, and display digital images on an oscilloscope screen. This breakthrough can be seen as the forerunner of all subsequent computer imaging and recognizing the importance of this first digital photograph.
The ghostlike black-and-white photo only measured 176 pixels on a side—a far cry from today's megapixel digital snapshots—but it would become the Adam and Eve for all computer imaging to follow.
In 2003, the editors of Life magazine honored Kirsch's image by naming it one of "the 100 photographs that changed the world."
