ASCII renditions of photos have been around basically forever. Certainly printing these out on a line printer (80x24 screen was too small) was a thing in the mi

ASCII renditions of photos have been around basically forever. Certainly printing these out on a line printer (80x24 screen was too small) was a thing in the mid 70's, and I'd bet go back to the first scanners. Maybe the first quantized picture credit should go to Roman mosaics which quality wise are about the same as a lo-res JPEG.