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 lenses, 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 s ...

Biography

Angénieux graduated from the

École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education Secondary education or post-primary education covers two phases on the International Standard Classification of Education scal ...

in 1928, and from the École Supérieure d'Optique the next year. He was a student of Henri Chrétien. After working for Pathé, Angénieux founded a company specialising in cinema equipment in 1935, ''Les Etablissements Pierre Angénieux''. He started using

Geometric optics Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ca ...

rather than Physical optics 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 Carl Zeiss AG. Zeiss gathered a group of gifted practica ...

and

Ernst Abbe Ernst Karl Abbe HonFRMS (23 January 1840 – 14 January 1905) was a German physicist, optical scientist, entrepreneur, and social reformer. Together with Otto Schott and Carl Zeiss, he developed numerous optical instruments. He was also a c ...

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 lenses on Single-lens reflex cameras. In 1953, Angénieux designed the fastest lens of the time, reaching 0.95. The design was used in the

Bell & Howell Bell and Howell LLC is a U.S.-based services organization and former manufacturer of cameras, lenses, and motion picture machinery, founded in 1907 by two projectionists, and originally headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. The company is now ...

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 US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

with photographic equipment used in the

Ranger program The Ranger program was a series of unmanned 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 surf ...

, Project Gemini, Apollo program, 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. I ...

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

Ranger 7 Ranger 7 was the first space probe of the United States to successfully transmit close 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 d ...

, 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 Group () is a French multinational company that designs, develops and manufactures electrical systems as well as devices and equipment for the aerospace, defence, transportation and security sectors. The company is headquartered in Paris' ...

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 Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

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