engineering

Takuo Miyagishima

Takuo Miyagishima is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Takuo Miyagishima rather than just read about it. In short: Takuo Miyagishima (Japanese: 宮城島卓夫, March 15, 1928 – August 4, 2011) was an American design engineer who worked for Panavision. He was responsible for many of the company's innovations in motion picture photography and projection, and also designed the company's logo.

Key takeaways

Takuo Miyagishima belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Takuo Miyagishima to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Takuo Miyagishima from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Takuo Miyagishima (Japanese: 宮城島卓夫, March 15, 1928 – August 4, 2011) was an American design engineer who worked for Panavision. He was responsible for many of the company's innovations in motion picture photography and projection, and also designed the company's logo. In 2005, Miyagishima received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for his achievements and successful career at the 77th Academy Awards.

Early years Miyagishima was born in Gardena, California in 1928, to Japanese emigrant parents from Shizuoka. He had one brother and two sisters. He grew up in Long Beach and Terminal Island. Miyagishima was attending junior high school in 1941 when World War II began, and was able to avoid the Japanese American internment by moving to Utah to live with relatives. He graduated from Davis High School in Kaysville.

Career at Panavision Miyagishima worked for Panavision from 1954 until his retirement in 2009, by which time he was Senior Vice-President of Engineering. His first project was the Super Panatar projection lens in 1955. He helped develop Panavision's Primo Series of lenses, used for films including Empire of the Sun; these lenses received Academy and Emmy awards. He received the Fuji Gold Medal in 1991 for his single autofocusing anamorphic camera lens. He also worked on Panavision's Panaflex Motion Picture Camera System and Auto Panatar anamorphic photographic lens. With Albert Saiki, he developed an award-winning Eyepiece Leveler. Miyagishima died in 2011, aged 83. Panavision's T-series line of anamorphic lenses, introduced in 2016, are named in his honor.

Awards He received the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation from AMPAS in 1999, and the Academy's Gordon E. Sawyer Award presented at the Scientific and Technical Awards Dinner on February 12, 2005. In 1999 he also received the American Society of Cinematographers' President's Award, shared with Albert Mayer. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Takuo Miyagishima

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Takuo Miyagishima claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Takuo Miyagishima before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Takuo Miyagishima ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Takuo Miyagishima

In research: Takuo Miyagishima appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Takuo Miyagishima in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Takuo Miyagishima is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1928 births, 2011 deaths, 20th-century American mechanical engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Takuo Miyagishima outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Takuo Miyagishima in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Takuo Miyagishima means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Takuo Miyagishima out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Takuo Miyagishima in simple terms?

Why does Takuo Miyagishima matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Takuo Miyagishima?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Takuo Miyagishima.