ThunderScan was a single dot scanner that replaced the ribbon cartridge in my Apple ImageWriter Printer. You fed a photo into the rollers and via the ThunderScan software you could capture 1-bit (Black or White) images of the photo. These could be edited in MacPaint. It was not a great leap to imagine color. This convinced me that the computer, not the TV was where we would be managing and editing our photos in the future. It would take a few more years to convince anybody else at Kodak.
At this point (Sept 1985), I had finally been released from servitude in the QA Lab and had joined the advanced development team on the 3rd floor of Building 1, at the Elmgrove Plant. This new division, Consumer Electronics, was selling videotape and 8mm camcorders built by Matsushita initially. They were in the process of developing a line of products based on the new Still Video Floppy. An analog recording device, and unfortunately, a product I immediately deemed would be Dead On Arrival, due to the extremely poor image quality of still video images. What were they thinking! That was something that HAD to be changed! Digital was the way forward!
I was assigned to work on the new SV7510 Still Video Printer which used Kodak Instant Film. They needed somebody to improve the color reproduction, and I was chosen due to my darkroom experience. However, if you understood the sensitometric characteristics of Kodak Instant film, you'd know that the color balance could vary significantly from picture to picture, within a single pack of Instant film. So, it was not going to be an easy task.
As I got to know the project manager, I began to bring in prints of my photos that I had scanned with my ThunderScanner, and edited in MacPaint, to try and convince him that computers and digital imaging/recording were the future, analog storage was a dead end.
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