The 1st Camera Phone Image in History: See the Photo and Learn How It Was Created

With no social media apps or smartphones in the late 90’s, digital photos were practically unheard of. That changed when Phillippe Kahn made history by sharing the world’s first camera phone image in June 1997. Kahn built the first camera phone in time to capture his daughter’s birth, while his wife was in labor for 18 hours. Keep reading to see the photo and learn more about the phone.

Phillippe Kahn made history with the first camera phone image

On June 11, 1997, Phillippe Kahn shared the first camera phone image of his newborn daughter. In just 18 hours, the length of his wife’s labor, Kahn developed the camera phone technology that revolutionized digital photo sharing.

Kahn was waiting at the Sutter Maternity Center in Santa Cruz, California, and decided this would be the perfect moment to send a photo through his flip phone. 

How Kahn created the camera phone

At the time, Kahn was an engineer and entrepreneur who combined a Motorola StarTAC flip phone, a Casio QV digital camera (320x240 pixel resolution) and a Toshiba 430CDT laptop computer to create the very first camera phone. 

It was set up so that when he took a photo with his camera, the system would dial up his web server automatically, and then it would upload the picture onto it. From there, it would send email alerts to friends and family, who were able to login to download the image.

Before creating the camera phone, Kahn had been working on photo technology. His earlier venture, Picture Mail which he hoped would be a web server-based infrastructure for photos. Ultimately, his camera phone was made with the same concept in mind. 

The camera phone is now over 20 years old

As of 2017, the camera phone celebrated its 20th anniversary, and Kahn was just getting started in 1997. Kahn told IEEE Spectrum that “he was aiming to be the Polaroid of the 21st century, providing ‘Instant Picture Mail’ that would be a digital update of Polaroid’s vision of the instant camera.”. At the time, however, he hadn’t built the hardware that would allow this process to work. 

After capturing his daughter’s birth, Kahn later founded LightSurf, earning numerous patents for his groundbreaking work. During the first post-birth month, he integrated the design by “using a microcontroller, a CMOS sensor, and a phone.” Kahn told IEEE Spectrum.

While the camera phone was a game changer in digital photography, Kahn was unable to sell it to major camera companies including Kodiak and Polaroid. They thought phones would mainly be focused on voice communication and believed that cameras would just go wireless. 

People are still talking about Kahn’s camera phone

While the camera phone has been around for almost 30 years now, even decades later, people are still talking about Kahn’s innovative camera phone. In fact, a recent Reddit thread details Kahn’s accomplishments and sings his praises.

“It's amazing how a moment of innovation coincided with such a personal milestone,” one user wrote. “That first camera phone image really changed the way we capture and share memories.”

Another user wrote, “Who would have thought the birth of something new would literally be the birth of something new?”

Kahn’s camera phone image was featured in TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Photos of All Time in 2016  In 2017, Subconscious Films also created a short film recreating the day that Kahn shared the photo.

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