WEBSTER, N.Y. — Some kids spend their summer vacation taking family trips. Some spend time at camp. Some young student campers in Webster who have big ideas got to learn from the man who invented something most of us use every day. 

Every good invention starts with imagination. Kids at Camp Invention at Webster’s Spry Middle School are learning it.

“I’ve always thought about inventions,” said camper Olivia Rosedahl.  “But this took it to a whole 'nother level.”

Steve Sasson already knows it. Though the 74-year-old says he wishes he had access to such a camp when he was a kid.

“It’s really cool, just to be around a whole bunch of other kids talking about their ideas,” said Sasson.

Sasson spoke to campers — 200 kids with a whole bunch of ideas.

“I want to invent like a seven-camera phone,” said Joshua Olivia.

Inspired by the guest of honor. An inventor himself, who fifty years ago had a big idea.

“Does anybody know what I invented?” asked Sasson of the assembled crowd of young inventors. “The digital camera, that’s right. I invented that many years ago.”

In 1975, Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, invented the very first digital camera — a creation that didn’t find a practical use until decades later.

“Whenever you introduce a brand new idea, maybe even call it a disruptive idea, you have a lot of resistance," he said.

At the time, digital didn’t fit Kodak’s popular film and photo processing business model. Sasson worked in the background to perfect an invention that worked, but still needed a lot of work.

“We don’t always get it right the first time,” he told campers. “In fact, we end up failing a lot.”

Sasson has 10 U.S. patents to his credit. He is also a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Sometimes, he says, inventors know more about how things don’t work, than how they do.

“I thought it was worthwhile,” said Sasson. “I thought it was a really good way to take and store and share and distribute pictures. But I didn’t know how it was going to unroll.”

Now, of course, digital cameras are everywhere. Sasson says one thing he never could have imagined was the selfie. Of course, there was no such thing as the internet or phones with cameras, or social networking back then.

“The world is inventing along with you,” he said. “So your invention sometimes turns out to be used in ways you never anticipated.”

It's a lesson for kids who inspire this inventor as much as he hopes to inspire them.

“That's what I think we're trying to do is get people's imagination energized about what I can do. What problem I can solve? What thing I can do that will benefit somebody?” said Sasson. “And that’s what this is about.”