Angénieux: The Angénieux Stories
Angénieux maintains a set of six history features under The Angénieux stories, supported by a dated milestone timeline. Together they cover Pierre Angénieux's two defining inventions — the Retrofocus wide-angle and the cine zoom — and the company's later work for cinema and spaceflight.
The collection is unusual in this index for how far back its subject matter reaches into optical design proper: the Retrofocus story is an account of the inverted-telephoto principle that made wide-angle lenses possible on reflex cameras, and the zoom story describes the cam-driven group movement and aberration balancing that the Angénieux zooms were built on.
The Stories
| Story | Subject | Official article | Surface & Stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inventions signed Pierre Angénieux | The Pictograph and the 1950 Retrofocus | Read at Angénieux | Retrofocus R1 35mm f/2.5 · Retrofocus R11 28mm f/3.5 |
| The Zoom innovations at Angénieux | Zoom optical and mechanical architecture | Read at Angénieux | — |
| The Primes at Angénieux | The first cine primes of 1951 and the f/0.95 of 1953 | Read at Angénieux | — |
| Angénieux & Space | Optics flown on Ranger, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab | Read at Angénieux | — |
| Angénieux & Hollywood | The Optimo zooms and the company's awards history | Read at Angénieux | — |
| Angénieux and DPs | The cinematographer's role in Angénieux design | Read at Angénieux | — |
The Retrofocus story names both catalog lenses directly: it identifies the R1 as "the very first Angénieux Retrofocus lens," a 35mm f/2.5, and records the 28mm f/3.5 Retrofocus that followed in 1953 with a 75° field.
The last two stories are the thinnest optically. "Angénieux & Hollywood" is largely an awards record and "Angénieux and DPs" is about the profession rather than the lenses, but both are kept here so the collection is listed in full.
Milestone Timeline
The history timeline is a dated list of Angénieux firsts that links back into the six stories. It records the 35mm f/2.5 Retrofocus of 1950, the 4× 17–68mm of 1957, the 10× 12–120mm and the Franscope anamorphic of 1961, the 10× 25–250mm of 1962, the 18× 27.5–500mm of 1967, the 2× 49–90mm for Leicaflex of 1968 and the later Optimo series.
The catalog's DEM 180mm f/2.3 APO is not the subject of any of the six stories and is therefore not cross-linked above.