Born in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York, Steve Sasson grew up with a keen interest in electronics. As a child, he designed and built radio receivers, stereo amplifiers and transmitters in his basement with salvaged electronic components from discarded televisions and radios. He attended the Brooklyn Technical High School, a specialized public high school in New York City, where he focused on technical and scientific studies. Sasson obtained a bachelors and a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. His first job in the CE industry was working as a draftsman for a consulting 
engineer in Little Falls, NJ.
His invention began in 1975 with a very broad assignment from his supervisor at Eastman Kodak Company, Gareth A. Lloyd: could a camera be built using solid state electronics, solid state imagers, and an electronic sensor known as a charge coupled device (CCD) that gathers optical information.
Sasson went about constructing the digital circuitry from scratch, using oscilloscope measurements as a guide. For the rest of the camera, he made use of what was available to him at the time: an analog-to-digital converter from Motorola, a movie-camera photographic lens made by Kodak, and tiny CCD chips introduced in 1973 by Fairchild Semiconductor.
The original prototype was eight pounds and about the size of a toaster. In December 1975, Sasson and his chief technician persuaded a lab assistant to pose for them. The black-and-white image, captured at a resolution of .01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), took 23 seconds to record onto a digital cassette tape and another 23 seconds to read off a playback unit onto a television. Then it popped up on the screen.
“You could see the silhouette of her hair,” Sasson said. But her face was a blur of static. “She was less than happy with the photograph and left, saying ‘You need work,”‘ he said. But Sasson already knew the solution: reversing a set of wires, the assistant’s face was restored.
In 1978, Sasson and Lloyd were issued U.S. Patent 4,131,919 for their digital camera.
Sasson continues to work for Kodak and during his tenure with the company has been involved 
in the development of Kodak’s award-winning range of EasyShare thermal printer docks, commercialization of retail photo kiosks, the halftone proofer in the graphics market and advanced technologies in Kodak’s professional range. Sasson also has played a role in Kodak’s developments in thermal printing.
Sasson now works to protect the intellectual capital of his employer, Eastman Kodak Company.
In 2004 he moved to Corporate Commercial Affairs within Kodak where he served as the project manager for intellectual property litigation. He is presently working in the Intellectual Property Transactions group at Kodak.
Sasson’s interest and devotion to electronics helped him to create the first prototype of a technology that has become a major commercial force and revolutionized the way the world takes pictures. In March 2007, Sasson received the “Visionary” award from the Photographic Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMDA).
On November 17, 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Sasson the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. This is the highest honor awarded by the US government to scientists, engineers, and inventors.
Editor Phil Robertson is an award-wining journalist and graphic designer. With a degree from the University of Florida’s School of Journalism, his career in journalism and publishing spans over 30 years, and includes positions as editor and publisher for several newspapers and magazines. During his career he has received a first-place award for investigative journalism from the Society of Newspaper Editors, and five ADDY awards for advertising design.
