Takashi Higuchi

Biography

Takashi Higuchi was a Nikon optical designer and a pioneer of the modern wide-angle zoom. Around 1960 he devised a negative-positive two-group layout that achieved zooming and focusing with the minimum two powered groups. Nikon describes the invention as a breakthrough that prompted optics manufacturers worldwide to pursue the same architecture, which remains foundational to normal and wide-angle zooms. Higuchi designed Nikon's early Zoom-Nikkor objectives and later managed the company's Sagamihara plant.

Sources: Nikon — NIKKOR: The Thousand and One Nights No. 56 · Nikon — NIKKOR: The Thousand and One Nights No. 62

Nippon Kogaku K.K.(1)