Bruce Beyer, "the father of digital photography," passed away

Unfortunately, none of us is eternal. Today it became known that Bruce Bayer, who can truly be called the “father of digital photography,” has died. He was 83 years old, and in his life, Bayer did a lot of useful things. One of the most famous inventions of Bayer is the “Bayer filter”. This is an array of color filters for the photosensitive elements of the image sensors. Accordingly, thanks to this filter, it became possible to obtain color images using a single sensor.

Bayer filter is used almost everywhere, in the vast majority of modern digital photo and video devices, including smartphones cameras. By the way, Bayer worked at the well-known Kodak company to all of us, while working in which he created his filter. This technology was patented, and the patent received the number 3971065. Here is a photo of the patent itself:
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Here is the full version of the patent.

And here is a schematic depiction of the structure of the filter itself:



Here is an example of how the camera “sees” the world through a Bayer filter:



In addition to the filter itself, Bayer has developed algorithms for storing, analyzing, processing and printing images received by digital devices. Without Bayer, the development of digital imaging technologies would probably not be so active. Who knows, digital cameras and camcorders would be so widespread if it were not for Bruce Beyer.

Via petapixel