Founded in 1917 as Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō, Nikon began as a military optical equipment manufacturer. In the 1930s, it introduced the Nikkor lens for civilian cameras. After WWII, Nikon shifted to consumer cameras, debuting the Nikon I in 1948 and the Nikon F SLR in 1959. The company pioneered autofocus in the 1980s and embraced digital photography with the D-series DSLRs in the 1990s.