I do not profess to be an expert on radiography, digital or otherwise. And I have long ceased hoping to reach the exceptional, high-quality standards taught and achieved by my Temple University School of Dentistry professor of radiography, the late Dr. William Updegrave. But, as far as I know from personal experience, some of the first charge-coupled device, or CCD, sensors being used intra-orally were part of the Xerox Corporation’s "Xeroradiography" system.
I know of this early pioneering development because I had the good fortune to present a demonstration table clinic entitled "Introduction to Xeroradiography" at the May 1980 Delaware State Dental Society annual meeting, convened at the University of Delaware.
Using a very large and, at the time, expensive machine the size of a console copying unit, I printed out a strip of positive intraoral images, much as one would receive from a boardwalk automated picture booth. Only not for 25 cents.
Would not this development predate the mid- and late 1980s dates cited for the Kodak effort and the French and Swedish developments credited in the October JADA radiography articles1,2 as first in the field? And would it not be interesting to learn what machinations might have occurred within the halls of Xerox that caused them to decide not to follow through with Xeroradiography?
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