Russell Kirsch, the computer scientist who 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:invented the pixel, has died at the age of 91.
Born to Russian and Hungarian immigrant parents in 1929, Kirsch studied at NYU, Harvard and MIT before joining the National Bureau of Stand𒀰ards, now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, as part of the team that ran the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC), the first operational stored-program computer.
In 1957, Kirsch's team developed a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:digital image scanner to "trace variations of intensity over the surfaces of photographs." One of the first photographs scanned was a pict🔴ure of Kirsch's three-month-old son. The image captured was 30,976 pixels, a 176 × 176 array, in an area 5 cm × 5 cm. Although the depth was only one bit per pixel, the combination of different scans afforded grayscale information.
In 2003, the image of Kirsch’s son, which is now in the Portland Art Museum, was named by LIFE magazine one of the "100 Photographs That Changed the World" given its significance in the development of digital photography. Kirsch’s invention was also instrumental in designing technology for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:space exploration, allowing astronauts to take live photos of the Moon and send them to Earth during the Apollo moon landing. It also contributed to the development of Sir Godfrey Hounsfield’s CAT scan, whi🧔ch was introduced in the 1970s.
His work “laid the foundations for satellite imagery, CT scans, virtual reality, a💃nd Facebook,” said an article in Science News in 2010. His ultimate goal was that computers 🥂would eventually mirror the human mind, an objective that seems a little more achievable with each passing day.
Kirsch, who officially retired in 2001, continued work🅰ing up until recently. In 2011, he presented a project to use pixels of various shapes and sizes, rather than just squares, as well as adaptive pixels that would enable much clearer images at lower resolutions. Today, pixels make images possible on mobile devices, computers, cameras, streaming platforms and video games. Kirsch is survived by his wife, Joan, and children, Walden, Peter, Lindsey, and Kara.
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