Lenses ~ short list of 1800's optical designs

Over the winter I wondered what the history of lens development for photography might look like.  While there are many many variations on the theme, I found a way through the Madness that made sense to me.

 

Keeping mind that optics were well known before photography, their adaptation to the photographic process is interesting.  It turns out, a certain Dr. Petzval played an important role.  It's so important, that in the 1902 Camera Club of Paris magazine they published the following description of the installation of a monument in the likeness of Dr. Petzval at the Imperial University in Vienna.

Translated from French -

"...  The series of festivities given by the Vienna Photographic Society concluded with the formal presentation of the Petzval monument to the Imperial University. This monument, modeled by Brenek and executed in marble, bears the following inscription:

DR. JOSEPH PETZVAL

PROFESSOR DER MATHEMATIK 1837-1877

geb. 1807; gest. 1891

gewidmet von der PHOTOGR. GESELLSCHAFT IN VIEN

In other words: To Joseph Petzval, Professor of Mathematics, born in 1807; died in 1891; dedicated by the Vienna Photographic Society

The monument depicts, in high relief, a remarkably expressive portrait of the great scholar. It is framed by a foliage-adorned border, and on the entablature, a laurel branch rests on a lens board. This detail recalls the portrait lens invented by Petzval, as noted in the document signed by Mr. Schipper, Rector of the University of Vienna, in which he declares his acceptance, on behalf of the Academic Senate, of the gift offered by the Photographic Society..."

Keeping in mind that:

• Dr. Petzval and Voigtländer had a business agreement until a falling out separated them
• Steinheil was awarded a patent for their Rectalinear lens a week or two _before_ Dallmeyer ~ the designs/calculations appear to be strikingly similar
• Carl Zeiss was awarded a patent for their Tessar in spite of the fact that both Dr. Petzval and Steinheil had similar, though inverted, lenses decades before
• The Englishman Dennis Taylor worked from concepts (and wrote and spoke often about his approach), where the Germans preferred to work from calculations
• Germany in an Axis technology transfer to Japan before the outbreak of the Second World War shared their calculation approach to optical design, which now the adopted/accepted solution for making lenses today 

Here's a brief timeline that I've found useful for understand how photographic lenses came to be.

• 1840 - Voigtländer and Petzval - Portrait 4 elements 2 groups ~ *sharp resolution drop-off from center to edges
• 1857 - Petzval Orthoskop ~ 4 elements 3 groups ~ inverse of what later became tessar
• 1866 - Steinheil preceeded Dallmeyer by a week or two - Rectalinear  4 elements 2 groups ~ *corrected the sharp drop-off of the original Petzval/Voigtländer Portrait 
• 1881 - Steinheil Antiplanet (Triplar, Culminar with examples made into the 1970's) ~ 4 elements 3 groups ~  inverse of what later became tessar
• 1890 - Rudolph Zeiss Protar ~ Anastigmat 4 elements 2 groups ~ similar to the earlier Rectilinear, though with different calculations and glasses
• 1892 - Emil von Hoegh - Goerz ~ Dagor 6 elements 2 groups 
• 1893 - Dennis Taylor ~ Cooke Triplet 3 elements 3 groups ~ outstanding corrections across the field
• 1893 - Steinheil Orthostigmat ~ Dagor-type 6 elements 2 groups 
• 1895 - Voigtländer Collinear ~ Dagor-type 6 elements 2 groups 
• 1900 - Hans Harting ~ Voigtlander Heliar 5 elements 3 groups Cooke derivative with cemented doublets on both ends of a symmetrical triplet layout
• 1903 - Zeiss Tessar ~ 4 elements 3 groups

Of course if a person digs just a bit deeper they'll find hundreds and hundreds of opticians who made photographic lenses and contributed to the development of optics for photography.  So the field of knowledge can get very muddy very quickly.  I stripped everything to just the simplest of skeletons.  Relevant details are left to the reader to explore.

To me, the important years would be 1840, 1866, and 1893.  Everything seems to descend from design advancements patented in those years.

------------- Reference Materials ---------------

Rapid Rectilinear 

Optical design forms 

Wiki on the Cooke triplet 

DPReview forum thread on lenses that preceded the tessar 

Tessar thoughts 

Tessar formula recalculations