od cinematography in the 1930s was the development of the Technicolor process which became available in 1931 (1930s: Technicolor and beyond, 2003). The provision of a beam-splitting prism behind the objective in the Technicolor 3-strip camera made it impossible to use the wide angle objectives generally available in the early 1930s. Technicians set about providing a lens of short focal length and wide relative aperture with the long back focal distance necessary to clear the prism. The most notable feature of these lenses, including those developed by Horace W. Lee in Great Britain, ôis the inclusion in the 30mm design of what might be called the inverse telephoto principle, whereby the back focal length is considerably longer than the equivalent focal length (Ball, 1935, p. 127).ö
New lenses, therefore, were among the major technological developments that fostered new cinematographic techniques and developments in the 1930s in Hollywood and elsewhere that movies were being made. For example:
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