A Japanese company, Hitachi, has developed the technology for making pocket-sized camcorders -- video cameras which are becoming essential family items (New Scientist, Vol 143, No 1945).
The technology is based on a secret technique to compress data some 100 times, thereby enabling it to be recorded on "flash memory", a microchip which could earlier record only still pictures that require less memory space.
Hitachi has already brought out a prototype -- the company claims that it is the world's smallest -- that weighs only 300 grams and can record 35 minutes of action.
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