Founded in 1919 as Asahi Kogaku Goshi Kausha manufacturing spectacle lenses; name changed to Asahi Optical Company Limited in 1938, by which time it was also manufacturing camera and cine lenses; introduced its first camera, the Asahiflex, in 1952; bought the name 'Pentax' from VEB Zeiss Ikon in East Germany in 1957; merged into the Hoya Corporation in 2008 and Pentax remains a business division and brand name of Hoya.