In late 1981, Sony surprised the photographic world with the first electronic still camera – the Mavica. The Mavica (which stood for Magnetic Video Camera) was not a digital camera, but an analog one, which recorded a single frame of a TV picture on a small 2-inch magnetic disk, awkwardly perched atop the camera.
Resolution was roughly 0.28 megapixels, with images being saved in the form of analog scan lines, in the same manner as what we now call a standard resolution television image. These early electronic cameras met with modest success.
