Willard Boyle and George Smith, co-inventors of the Charge-Coupled Device, were honored today by the National Academy of Engineering with the $500,000 Charles Stark Draper Prize. The two will split the award. The inventors were also inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame back on February 8th.

The Charge-Coupled Device was born in 1969 from a brainstorming session lasting a single hour. Not too shabby. The first CCD had a total of 6 pixels. Today’s digital still camera CCD’s commonly boast 6 million+ pixels. Also not too shabby…

(Via Slashdot)