The Charged Coupled Device (or CCD) was initially conceived in 1970 at Bell Labs by W. Boyle and G. Smith. ... Stored charged readout along the registers of the CCD would then allow this device to be a serial memory device. ... The charge transfer efficiency of this device was so low, that the overall yield was less than 0.5% (slightly less than good photographic plates at the time). ... Early observations with this CCD quickly showed its superiority over photographic plates. ...