Horace William Lee

Lee's designs helped to develop the modern cinematography industry, with high-speed lenses enabling sound synchronization, and the inverted telephoto providing enough space for a beam-splitter apparatus to capture color.

[5] The OPIC lenses were rebranded as Speed Panchro and offered in a variety of focal lengths, ranging from 24 to 108 mm, starting from 1930.

[5] That year, Lee also patented the inverted telephoto lens design, which allowed color reproduction for the motion picture industry.

Lee's invention allowed the insertion of a beamsplitter between the lens and film, which separated light into three color components which were recorded simultaneously and recombined in the Technicolor process.

Inverted telephoto designs became predominant for wide angle lenses used on single-lens reflex cameras, which required a longer flange focal distance to clear the bulky moving mirror that relays the image to the viewfinder.