Photoclubalpha

My father-in-law purchased a lens for £1 as a curiosity and came along to ask what it was.
The lens is a manual zoom and seems to have two secondary lenses mounted above what I presume are photo-cells or something similar.

Attached are a couple of images.
Note that the higher sensor is geared to move a few mm with the focus of the lens.

Does anyone have an idea what this lens was used for?

The old Sony beta cams used a sonopter lens. Maybe it's from an older Sony video camera.

Harvey, the 12-72 mm range seems to fit the one-size-fits-all lens for a small sensor - like video or p&s.

Dusty

This could have been a lens for a Super 8 camera, or similar device (using one of the other lenses to measure exposure. I'm not sure why a third lens with sensor would be needed

Let's say it came off an old video camera with an electronic viewfinder. One of those "lenses" could be for that purpose. There seems to be a bunch of housing missing so perhaps one of them is the internal monitor that the viewfinder would use.

Yes, thanks, it does look like lenses very like this one were used in early video cameras.

For example: this Ebay listing