Lenny Lipton, who as a college freshman wrote the lyrics to the classic folk tune “Puff the Magic Dragon,” and then used the song’s considerable royalties to fund years of pioneering research in 3-D filmmaking, died on Oct. 5 in Los Angeles. He was 82.

Peter Yarrow, Mr. Lipton’s classmate at Cornell, put the lyrics to music and in 1963, he and his folk trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, released it. The song was such an immediate and lasting hit that it allowed Mr. Lipton to leave his job and move to California, where he sought out a circle of independent filmmakers and made several short films of his own.

The royalties from “Puff” allowed him to explore stereoscopy, the technical name for 3-D technology. Ultimately, he accumulated some 70 patents related to 3-D, which seeded the emergence of a new generation of filmmaking. Today, some 30,000- movie screens across the United States use 3-D  techniques that evolved from Mr. Lipton’s innovations, The New York Times said.