NASA coined 'pixel' around 1965 for space probe images — a blend of 'pictures' and 'element.'
The smallest controllable element of a picture represented on a screen; a single point in a raster image.
A blend of 'pix' (an informal plural of 'pic,' itself a clipping of 'picture') and 'element.' The word was coined by Frederic C. Billingsley of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory around 1965, used in the context of digital image processing of photographs from space probes. An earlier variant 'pel' (picture element) had been used at Bell Labs, but 'pixel' won out. The word 'picture' itself comes from Latin 'pictūra' (a painting), from 'pingere' (to paint), from the Proto-Indo-European root *peik- (to cut, mark, or color). Key roots: pictūra (Latin: "a painting (from pingere, to paint)"), elementum (Latin: "a first principle, a basic component"), *peik- (Proto-Indo-European: "to cut, mark
The word 'pixel' was coined at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory around 1965 by engineer Frederic Billingsley, who was working on processing images sent back from space probes. Before 'pixel' won out, Bell Labs had used 'pel' (picture element), and other engineers used the full phrase 'picture element.' The 'pix' in pixel comes from 'pix,' a 1930s Hollywood slang plural of 'pic' (picture) — meaning the word that describes the fundamental unit