Pierre Angénieux (; 14 July 1907 in Saint-Héand – 26 June 1998) was a French engineer and optician, one of the inventors of the modern

zoom lens A zoom lens is a system of camera lens elements for which the focal length (and thus angle of view) can be varied, as opposed to a fixed-focal-length (FFL) lens (''prime lens''). A true zoom lens or optical zoom lens is a type of '' parfocal ...

es, and famous for introducing the

Angénieux retrofocus The Angénieux retrofocus photographic lens is a wide-angle lens design that uses an inverted telephoto configuration. The popularity of this lens design made the name retrofocus synonymous with this type of lens. The Angénieux retrofocus for st ...

Biography

Angénieux graduated from the

École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

in 1928, and from the École Supérieure d'Optique the next year. He was a student of

Henri Chrétien Henri Jacques Chrétien (; 1 February 1879, Paris – 6 February 1956, Washington, D.C.) was a French astronomer and an inventor. Born in Paris, France, his most famous inventions are: * the anamorphic widescreen process, using an anamorphic ...

. After working for

Pathé Pathé SAS (; styled as PATHÉ!) is a French major film production and distribution company, owning a number of cinema chains through its subsidiary Pathé Cinémas and television networks across Europe. It is the name of a network of Fren ...

, Angénieux founded a company specialising in cinema equipment in 1935, ''Les Etablissements Pierre Angénieux''. He started using

Geometric optics Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician ...

rather than

Physical optics In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics that studies Interference (wave propagation), interference, diffraction, Polarization (waves), polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric opti ...

in the design of his lenses, as

Carl Zeiss Carl Zeiss (; 11 September 1816 – 3 December 1888) was a German scientific instrument maker, optician and businessman. In 1846 he founded his workshop, which is still in business as Zeiss (company), Zeiss. Zeiss gathered a group of gifted p ...

and

Ernst Abbe Ernst Karl Abbe (23 January 1840 – 14 January 1905) was a German businessman, optical engineer, physicist, and social reformer. Together with Otto Schott and Carl Zeiss, he developed numerous optical instruments. He was also a co-owner of Ca ...

did, and developed computing methods decreasing the time needed to design a lens by an order of magnitude. In 1950, Angénieux introduced the

, which allowed mounting

wide-angle lens In photography and cinematography, a wide-angle lens is a Photographic lens, lens covering a large angle of view. Conversely, its focal length is substantially smaller than that of a normal lens for a given film plane. This type of lens allows mo ...

es on

Single-lens reflex camera In photography, a single-lens reflex camera (SLR) is a type of camera that uses a mirror and prism system to allow photographers to view through the lens and see exactly what will be captured. SLRs became the dominant design for professional a ...

s. In 1953, Angénieux designed the fastest lens of the time, reaching 0.95. The design was used in the

Bell & Howell Bell and Howell is a United States brand of cameras, lenses, and motion picture machinery. It was originally founded as a company in 1907, and headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. The company was acquired by Böwe Systec in 2003. Since 2010, the ...

70 series cameras for 35 years.– In 1956, Angénieux designed a constant aperture 17-68mm zoom lens, and a 12-120mm in 1958. Angénieux' company provided

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

with photographic equipment used in the

Ranger program The Ranger program was a series of uncrewed space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar su ...

Project Gemini Project Gemini () was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly. Conducted after the first American crewed space program, Project Mercury, while the Apollo program was still in early development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and ...

Apollo program The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which Moon landing, landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo followed Project Mercury that put the first Americans in sp ...

, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and the

Space Shuttle program The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its ...

. Notably, the first high-resolution photographs of the Moon, by

Ranger 7 Ranger 7 was the first NASA space probe to successfully transmit close-up images of the lunar surface back to Earth. It was also the first completely successful flight of the Ranger program. Launched on July 28, 1964, Ranger 7 was designed to a ...

, were made with a 25 mm 0.95 lens. In 1964, Angénieux received a Scientific or Technical award "for the development of a ten-to-one Zoom Lens for cinematography." He was honoured with the ''Grand Prix des Ingénieurs Civils'' in France in 1973, and with the 1989 Gordon E. Sawyer Award. His company also produced lenses for the Kodak Retinette and Pony cameras. In 1993, Angénieux' eponymous company was acquired by

Thales Group Thales S.A., Trade name, trading as Thales Group (), is a French multinational corporation, multinational aerospace and defence industry, defence corporation specializing in electronics. It designs, develops and manufactures a wide variety of aer ...

and renamed Thales Angénieux. The company still specializes in optical, electro-optical and optical-mechanic products. Since 2013, Thales Angénieux organizes every year on the occasion of the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...

the Pierre Angénieux Excellens in Cinematography ceremony to pay tribute to a prominent Director of Photography for its career.

Reference and notes

External links

Pierre Angénieux

on Gadzarts.
Angenieux website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Angenieux, Pierre 1907 births 1998 deaths Academy Award for Technical Achievement winners Optical engineers Lens designers Recipients of the Gordon E. Sawyer Award Arts et Métiers ParisTech alumni