Fairchild Model 1310 (1981)

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As I've explained in detail, Fairchild marketed the first commercially available CCD cameras. Starting with the MV-100 and MV-101, both intended for professional and industrial use. Of course Fairchild never made any consumer digital cameras so I picked just one of the many CCD cameras they built and marketed. The 1981 model CCD1310 was a typical line scan CCD camera with a CCD131 type sensor (in 1982 replaced by a CCD133 sensor) and a resolution of 1024 pixels. The camera plus the control unit was called model CCD1300 by the way. The camera had a c-mount bayonet and was controlled by a camera control unit the size of a vintage tape deck. It was also possible to connect the unit to a computer.

For some applications the camera could also be operated without a lens attached. It had automatic gain control that provided contrast control, visible light response, high sensitivity, low operating voltage and was cased in a sturdy, metal body with a tripod mount. Now how does a line scan camera work? A line scan array in the camera senses a line of optical information and produces an analog waveform, proportional to the brightness of the image. When motion is applied to the object being sensed, a complete picture or series of line-scan outputs is generated. The system can be used for precision non-contact measurements, facsimile sensing, OCR data acquisition, velocity measurements, surface flaw detection, shape recognition sorting and many other optical sensing functions.

Fairchild offered the camera in a bundle (CCU, camera, lens and cables) or separately. A lens would cost $250, the camera came to $2,500 and the control unit $1,000. An addition pixel locator (a circuit board) would cost another $600. In the picture gallery above you can see the model CCD1310 line scan camera and see that mine was an early 1981 model with the old CCD131 sensor. Any serious collector can easily spot that the design does not differ very much from the early MV-100 model.