Krioma.net

The two principle scientists behind the development of what is now in the majority of imaging devices have been recognised by being given the 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize, this is essentially the engineering equivalent of a Nobel award. Not bad, and they get a nice $500,000 award, which I'm sure will go down nicely. I do wonder what we would do without CCDs (charge-coupled devices; essentially convert photons (packets) of light into electrical charge) as we just use them in so many applications, though we could use CMOS or the more conventional photographic plate (though the quantum efficiency for these is crap and you don't get immediate output). More can be found in this [New York Times Article] and more info on the development of CCDs can be found on [Wiki].