Charles Stark Draper Prize, 2006.

Two former Bell Laboratories researchers who invented a microchip that became the building block for devices ranging from digital cameras to powerful telescopes were named winners yesterday of the 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize, the engineering equivalent of a Nobel award.

Willard S. Boyle, 81, and George E. Smith, 75, invented the imaging microchip, known as a charge-coupled device, in 1969. The chip converts light particles, or photons, into packets of electrical charges that are nearly instantaneously shifted in rows to the edge of the chip for scanning. (NYT)