There’s an interesting history of Nikon’s electronic division over at NikonWeb.com, and among other things, it mentions a fact I didn’t know about Photoshop: before it was bought by Adobe, it was offered to Nikon and a few other camera companies. They turned it down, and perhaps not unwisely: they weren’t software companies, after all.
It’s strange to think about what might have happened. Personally, I’m guessing Photoshop wouldn’t be what it is today; Adobe was a different kind of incubator and, uninhibited by a completely different primary business, as Nikon was, they could dedicate much more time and energy to the program.
There’s also an account of the interesting QV1000C, a very early electronic camera from 1988 that stored NTSC analog images. Head over to NikonWeb and check out the rest of the story.