Kodak DC20 (1996)

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The Kodak DC20 was announced 1996-06-14 but not marketed the common way. No. Kodak put up a survey on their website with tons of questions and more than 14,000 people responded. Kodak was surprised and the DC20 became the first digital camera that Kodak sold on-line.

As you can read elsewhere on this website, Chinon built this camera for Kodak and Kodak later acquired Chinon. Chinon marketed this camera in Japan and Kodak in the rest of the world. At the time the camera was marketed it was one of the smallest cameras available. It was also one of the simplest point-and-shoot cameras. No display, no external memory slot, only three buttons and some status LED's. The camera could be operated with one photo battery and would turn off after 90 seconds of inactivity to save battery power.

For both cameras different optional accessoires were available. Kodak offered a now sought-after external flash unit and Chinon offered an external PC card drive so images could be copied from the camera to a PC card for permanent storage. I just learned that Kodak also offered the external PC card drive for the Kodak DC20! Unfortunately it was only sold in Japan.