David A Grafton will receive this year's Gorden E Sawyer Award, an Oscar statuette for technological industry contributions, from the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Grafton is a pioneer in designing lenses for optical effects printers which, at the time of their development, were adopted by virtually every visual effects facility in the business.

Grafton will be presented with his Oscar at the Scientific & Technical Awards dinner on Feb 9, 2008, in Los Angeles.

'David's innovative designs have enabled audiences to see the 'impossible' on movie screens, and his work has dramatically improved the quality of visual effects in the motion picture industry,' said Academy President Sid Ganis.

Born in the UK in 1924, Grafton moved to the US in 1953 and spent more than 30 years designing electro-optical systems for IBM, NCR, EG&G and Xerox. In the 1970s, he began consulting for the film industry where the highly specialized lenses he designed for optical effects printers enabled the seamless blending of multiple images from different sources.

His work contributed to the ground-breaking effects in such classics as the first Star Wars trilogy and Blade Runner.