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The Nobel Prize in physics goes to Charles Kao, of Standard Communications Labs in England and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and George Smith and Willard Boyle of Bell Labs in New Jersey¹. Kao figured out how to transmit light over long distances in optical glass fibers³. From the official announcement: “Today, more than a billion kilometers of optical fiber² around the world forms the backbone⁴ of modern global communication.”

In 1969, Smith and Boyle made your digital camera possible by inventing the charge-coupled device, the CCD: “This device allows electronic recording⁵ of images and it replaces the photographic film in cameras. The CCD records the image as a distribution of charge in small cells or pixels, and it outputs the image as a series of digital numbers. The CCD is a crucial component⁶ of advanced cameras, and it finds numerous applications in scientific and medical equipment. For example, it gives us the spectacular images of the universe that we can see today.”

—Steve Mirsky