The Very First Cell-Phone Picture

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The Very First Cell-Phone Picture

Philippe Kahn is a mathematician, technology innovator, entrepreneur and founder of four technology companies: Fullpower Technologies, LightSurf Technologies, Starfish Software and Borland.

Philippe Kahn is also the man you want to thank for being able to take beautiful pictures on your mobile phone. Kahn has always had a passion for blending technology with everyday life.

In 1997, Philippe Kahn was stuck in a Northern California maternity ward with nothing to do. The software entrepreneur had been shooed away by his wife while she birthed their daughter, Sophie. 

So Kahn, who had been tinkering with technologies that share images instantly, jerry-built a device that could send a photo of his new-born to friends and family—in real time. 

Like any invention, the setup was crude: He purchased a Casio QV-10 digital camera during a time when only simple email existed and wireless bandwidth was constrained.

In 2016, Time Magazine included Kahn's first camera phone photo in their list of the 100 most influential photos of all time

He connected the digital camera to his flip-top cell phone when the Internet was just four years old, Kahn inserted the first point, shoot and share camera into a Motorola Star tac, the most popular mobile cellophane at the time.

The concept is now one of the most prominent and prized features on cell phones and smartphones worldwide, synched by a few lines of code he’d written on his laptop in the hospital. 

On June 11, 1997, an image of Kahn's new baby Sophie became the first-ever photo ever taken by a mobile phone. But the effect has transformed the world: Kahn’s device captured his daughter’s first moments and transmitted them instantly to more than 2,000 people.

Kahn soon refined his ad hoc prototype, and in 2000 Sharp used his technology to release the first commercially available integrated camera phone, in Japan.

The phones were introduced to the U.S. market a few years later and soon became universal. 

Kahn’s invention forever altered how we communicate, perceive and experience the world and laid the groundwork for smartphones and photo-sharing applications like Instagram and Snapchat. 

Phones are now used to send hundreds of millions of images around the world every day—including a fair number of baby pictures.