A resolution commemorating the development of the charge-coupled device.

Mr. President, I am pleased the Senate is poised to pass this resolution today honoring the invention of the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which has greatly improved our level of imaging technology.

In 1969, Dr. Willard S. Boyle and Dr. George E. Smith worked together at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, and created a basic design for a silicon-memory chip, known as a CCD. This breakthrough technology was crucial to advancing digital imaging technology and can be found in most imaging devices, including digital cameras and video recorders, space-based telescopes and satellites, and medical imaging devices.

A CCD contains a light-sensitive chip that is able to store small amounts of charges in capacitors. A group of these capacitors create a pixel, which can be combined with other pixels to generate an image. The first CCD had just six pixels while the average camera now contains four to six million pixels. It is a credit to Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith's innovation that this technology has been developed into the high resolution images we use in our every day lives.

Each year, the National Academy of Engineering honors an engineer or engineers whose accomplishments have significantly bettered society by improving our quality of life, providing the ability to live freely and comfortably, and/or easing access to information. This year, the Academy has chosen to honor Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith with the prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize for their innovation in imaging technology and invention of the CCD.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame has also chosen to commemorate Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith's contributions to society by inducting them into their Hall of Fame. The National Inventors Hall of Fame was founded in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations.

I hope that my colleagues will join me in commemorating the contributions to our society and standard of living that CCD technology has made and congratulating Dr. Willard S. Boyle and Dr. George E. Smith for their justly deserved awards.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 478 submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements related thereto be printed in the Record.