Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 22, 2012. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
According to the Imaging Resource website, the scientist, who developed the filter during his time at Eastman Kodak, died on November 13 in the city of Bath in the US state of Maine.
The Bayer filter is still ubiquitous in many digital cameras; it was patented in 1976. It consists of a checkerboard-like arrangement made up of 50 percent green and 25 percent each red and blue filters (RGB). The higher proportion of green takes into account that the human eye reacts more sensitively to green than to other colours. The Bayer filter is applied to CCD or CMOS image sensors so that they can record colour images.
Until its invention, it is said to have still been common to place three separate sensors behind a prism. Thanks to Bryce’s filter, colour information for images could be captured more cheaply and with less effort from the time it was developed.
Alongside the colour filter, Bayer is also said to have developed algorithms for storing, optimising and printing digital images. According to Imaging Resource, Bryce Bayer had already retired in the mid-1990s after a long career at Kodak.
