Eric Fossum: The Inventor who Revolutionized the iPhone

You might not have heard Eric Fossum’s name before now, but you use his invention every day. So do billions of people around the world.

The next time you share a photo of your meal on Instagram, watch your favorite YouTuber’s latest upload, FaceTime with family across the country, or like your best friend’s profile pic on Facebook, thank Eric Fossum,“Father of the Selfie,” for the CMOS image sensor he invented in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory 37 years ago. His “camera on a chip” is inside nearly every smartphone in the world—and web cams, digital cameras, pill cameras, and many other imaging devices we use today. In 2020, it’ll even make its way to the surface of Mars inside cameras on NASA’s newest rover, set to launch next July. Eric’s revolutionary contributions to engineering shape our modern daily lives and have more than earned him his spot in the Inventors Hall of Fame and accolades including the Queen Elizabeth Prize—considered the Nobel Prize of the engineering world. Is the ability to invent a natural gift or a skill we can learn and nurture? We explore this question and so much more with masterful inventor Eric Fossum.