#firstcameraphone

....no, we don't mean this.

Philippe Kahn looked at his three devices, a Casio QV-10 camera, a Motorola cellphone and a Toshiba laptop and knew that by the 21st century, it would be necessary for these three to join together. "We already had the building blocks necessary to enable the public to point, shoot and share photographs anywhere, anytime and wirelessly. What we needed was for internet servers, cellular networks, cellphones and camera to work together seamlessly and intelligently."

The birth of his daughter catalyzed his effort to create the first camera phone. On June 11, 1977, Kahn was blessed with a baby girl and 2,000 lucky recipients received the world's first Picture-Mail message. The camera phone made possible for the publicizing of a normally private event to the public before even leaving the hospital.

Despite his friend's and family's astonishment with the instant picture mail, Kahn's invention wasn't received too enthusiastically by cell phone companies. Their focus was elsewhere, on improving voice communication. But they found receptivity in Japan and launched the first commercial camera phone in 2000. By 2005, camera phones were available world wide. 

Kahn rightfully credits his invention with the rise of citizen journalism, an increased sense of personal freedom and the ability to share pictures instantly. The camera phone's greatest accomplishment, according to Kahn, seems to be that the world is better connected, making it "a step closer to world perfected."