Dycam Gator (1993)

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This may not be known to many but Dycam was an elaborate manufacturer of custom and modular digital cameras where the Dycam Gator was the first such one. It was a grayscale camera, made for the parellel port of notebook computers in a joint effort among Dycam, IBM and the University of Florida Research Foundation (hence the name 'Gator') and introduced in September 1993. The camera clamped right into the parallel port and could only take one picture at a time, to take another shot, the picture you took before had to be downloaded.

Contrary to popular belief there was no color version of the Gator. It was a 256-level grayscale camera with auto exposure that ran under DOS, Windows and Macintosh. The software supported an on screen viewfinder. The retail price was set at $795. Picture material of the Gator does not exist, the picture I used is that of a similar Dycam product.