It seems only fitting to launch this site with the news of the death of Willard Boyle, who won the Nobel Prize for the invention of the CCD – charge coupled device – the little imaging sensor that launched the digital imaging age. He also was co-inventor of the first continuously operating ruby laser.
He passed away a couple of days ago in Wallace, Nova Scotia, at the age of 86.
In 1953 he joined Bell Labs and, in 1969, he and George E. Smith invented the CCD, for which they received several awards, including the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in July
My kind of guy, he drove a Mini Cooper with the licence plate “CCD.”