REPRINT — author contact: <
[email protected]> A Brief History of ‘Pixel’ Richard F. Lyon Foveon Inc., 2820 San Tomas Expressway, Santa Clara CA 95051 ABSTRACT The term pixel, for picture element, was first published in two different SPIE Proceedings in 1965, in articles by Fred C. Billingsley of Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The alternative pel was published by William F. Schreiber of MIT in the Proceedings of the IEEE in 1967. Both pixel and pel were propagated within the image processing and video coding field for more than a decade before they appeared in textbooks in the late 1970s. Subsequently, pixel has become ubiquitous in the fields of computer graphics, displays, printers, scanners, cameras, and related technologies, with a variety of sometimes conflicting meanings. Reprint — Paper EI 6069-1 Digital Photography II — Invited Paper IS&T/SPIE Symposium on Electronic Imaging 15–19 January 2006, San Jose, California, USA Copyright 2006 SPIE and IS&T. This paper has been published in Digital Photography II, IS&T/SPIE Symposium on Electronic Imaging, 15–19 January 2006, San Jose, California, USA, and is made available as an electronic reprint with permission of SPIE and IS&T. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic or multiple reproduction, distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited. A Brief History of ‘Pixel’ Richard F. Lyon Foveon Inc., 2820 San Tomas Expressway, Santa Clara CA 95051 ABSTRACT The term pixel, for picture element, was first published in two different SPIE Proceedings in 1965, in articles by Fred C.