The first digital camera prototype is closest to the fire ant's compound eyes, which only have 180 of these optical units, called ommatidia.

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Of course, technology often doesn't move forward in the exact way that we expect, and it is hard to believe that many consumes would carry around devices with the cannon-like protruding lenses of the Wonder Camera prototype.

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It had a crude prototype of a digital camera as early as 1975 and in the mid-1990s helped Apple develop its QuickTake 100 digital camera.

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Hasselblad was showing off a slew of different designs for the forthcoming camera -- and while we were told that its still in prototype mode (both from company reps and signage on the device itself), the camera seemed to be in mostly working order.

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Fujitsu intelligent phone prototype This speedy quad-core smartphone prototype has a 13.1-megapixel camera on board and is waterproof like its Japanese compatriot the Panasonic Eluga.

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Named for the product's "utopic vision, " ZionEyez now has a prototype with a more grounded spec list, including a 720p camera and 8GB of memory, along with micro-USB and Bluetooth connectivity for livecasting to Qik or LiveStream -- The Truman Show style.

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Google Chief Eric Schmidt demonstrated a prototype version of Google Goggles Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that lets users translate written words using a camera phone.

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Once he established the science behind the idea was possible, he built a prototype, which involved a sensor that detects what level of agitation a patient is experiencing, using a digital video camera.

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