Bryce Bayer

"He, in fact, processed all of the pictures for his high school yearbook," his son David told The New York Times following Bayer's death.

[2] After receiving a bachelor's degree in engineering physics from the University of Maine in 1951, Bayer moved to Rochester, New York, to work as a research scientist at Eastman Kodak, where he would remain until his retirement in 1986.

In March 1975, Kodak filed a patent application, titled "Color imaging array", with Bayer as the sole inventor.

[6] "The pattern is very simple," Ken Parulski, former chief scientist for Kodak's digital camera division, told The New York Times after Bayer's death.

Steve Sasson, co-inventor of the first digital camera, told the Rochester newspaper "that Bayer's contributions were not only pioneering but prophetic."

Parulski added "that Bayer's invention is the key reason we have cameras that are compact yet provide sharp-looking pictures."

Bayer's contribution to photography also included algorithms that play a crucial role in storing, enhancing, and printing digital images.

Bayer was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal in 2009 given "in recognition of any invention, research, publication or other contribution which has resulted in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense."

Bayer died on November 13, 2012, in Bath, Maine, of "a long illness related to dementia," his son Douglas told The New York Times.