Trivia

A poem he typed up in college, at age 19, would be the inspiration and overall basis for "Puff the Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary. The song was extremely popular when it came out in 1963, and has since become legendary.

The Smithsonian Institution honored him in 1996 for StereoGraphics' invention of CrystalEyes, electronic eyewear for computer graphics and video applications such as molecular modeling, aerial mapping and medical imaging. NASA selected it to remotely pilot the Mars Rovers, and it was used by Lockheed to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

Authored books including 1979's Lipton on Filmmaking; 1982's Foundations of the Stereoscopic Cinema; 1983's Independent Filmmaking; and 2021's The Cinema in Flux: The Evolution of Motion Picture Technology From the Magic Lantern to the Digital Era.

He developed the ZScreen electro-optical modulator - a tool used in digital 3D projection - through his company StereoGraphics which was acquired by RealD in 2005.

Studied engineering at Cornell University.

In 2011, the International 3D Society (now the Advanced Imaging Society) presented him with its Century Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Has three children, Anna, Noah and Jonah.

In the 1960s, he shot several experimental films, including Let a Thousand Parks Bloom, about People's Park in Berkeley, California.

In 2015 he held 68 patents and had dozens more pending.

He became a leading expert of narrow-gauge (8mm, Super 8 and 16mm) filmmaking. This resulted in the publication of his book "Independent Filmmaking" (1972) which was a comprehensive book for people who wanted to use home movie equipment to create filmmaking projects. It quickly became the standard text in college filmmaking courses. He followed this up with "The Super 8 Book" (1975) and "Lipton on Filmmaking" (1979). All three were published under the name "Lenny Lipton".