The evolution of the scientific CCD

There is little doubt that the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) and its cousin the CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) have completely revolutionized the imaging field. It is becoming more and more difficult to obtain film for cameras and digital cameras are available from the cell phone to the professional photographer in multimegapixel format. This paper explores some of the origins of the CCD as a scientific sensor.