I strip away the usual mathematical baggage that hides the pixel from ordinary view, and then present a way of looking at what it has wrought. This brief history of the pixel begins with Joseph Fourier in the French Revolution and ends in the year 2000 – the recent millennium. Far from being squares or dots that ‘sort of’ approximate a smooth visual scene, pixels are the profound and exact concept at the heart of all the images that surround us – the elementary particles of modern pictures. The underlying idea – a repackaging of infinity – is subtle and beautiful. But what is a pixel? Why do so many people think that pixels are little abutting squares? Now that we’re aswim in an ocean of zettapixels (21 zeros), it’s time to understand what they are. I have billions of pixels in my cellphone, and you probably do too.
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