WEBSTER, N.Y. — Think about how many times a day you take a picture. The man who helped make that happen spoke to students in Webster on Thursday.

Steve Sasson invented the digital camera at Eastman Kodak Co. in 1975. He knew it would take awhile for it to catch on.

“You didn’t have to consume chemicals or processes or paper or anything like that. That was the benefit and I thought it was worth the wait,” Sasson said.

Now, he’s in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. That same group hosted Camp Invention at Spry Middle School, where kids spend the week working on their own projects like little bots. Olivia Rosdahm made one of her own.

“This is my glow box we made. We made the back panel, the battery pack, and it lights up, and then we made panels to go in so that the light reflects off and it makes it really cool,” Rosdahm said.

Sasson spoke to the students during lunch, telling them about his journey as an inventor.

“[What] I think we’re trying to do is get people’s imagination energized about what I can do, what problem I can solve, what thing I can do that will benefit somebody,” Sasson said.

Then he went to each classroom watching the kids try out the prototypes they made. He had a big bright smile on his face.

When Sasson joined Kodak, he was paving the way for digital innovation – but at a company that made its money off film.

He worked on digital cameras at the company for over two decades. With a colleague, he created the DSLR. The prototype for the first digital camera sat on a desk in a cubicle for over 15 years.

This technology would go on to dominate the industry, but Kodak refused to sell it to protect their film sales.

“Whenever you introduce a brand new idea, maybe even call it a disruptive idea, you hit a lot of resistance because we’re all comfortable with the present. And it took many, many years,” he said.

Kodak would file for bankruptcy in 2011. Some say their slow adaption to the digital age was costly. I asked Sasson if he thought the fate of the company would have changed if they adapted to his invention earlier. He says it’s a question he gets asked a lot.

“Would it have made any difference? I don’t know. I think that’s a question that has to be addressed, not just by the technology, but by the culture, by business models, by the evolving business models that that came to be in the late nineties and the early 2000,” he said.

Sasson told News10NBC’s Antonina Tortorello that he loves coming and seeing kids’ inventions, and that it’s not always about what the prototype looks like. It’s how the kids talk about it to him. And he’s excited to inspire another generation of young inventors.

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