From CNN:
Steven Sasson knew right away in December 1975 that his 8-pound, toaster-size contraption, which captured a black-and-white image on a digital cassette tape at a resolution of .01 megapixels, “was a little bit revolutionary.”
When anyone asked, the Eastman Kodak Co. engineer ventured that it would become a commercial reality in 15 to 20 years.
It would be a quarter century, though, before Kodak began to capitalize on Sasson’s breakthrough: the first digital camera.