August 12, 2012

1957, Russell Kirsch’s team at the National Bureau of Standards (NIST in the future) invented the world’s first scanner, a drum design. The first photo ever scanned was a 5cmx5cm picture of his 3-month old son, Walden:

Walden@3mos

Source: Wikipedia

On October 7th 1959, the Russians would take a similar approach (Photomultiplier Tubes / PMTs) to scan and transmit images of the far side of the Moon via the Luna-3 mission. The camera system on the Luna-3 was an astounding piece of engineering… taking film shots, having them developed on the craft, then having the developed film scanned by the PMTs and transmitted via Radio back to Soviet Russia. Don Mitchell’s astoundingly detailed analysis of Soviet Spacecraft has more, check it out.

The far-side of the Moon, seen for the first time:

Far side of the Moon

Source: Don P. Mitchell

Charge-coupled Devices (CCDs) are the dominant design today, but Drum Scanner designs remain the gold standard for historical content due to their ability to control sampling size and aperture (light). Drum scanners can go upto 24,000 pixels-per-inch.

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