… In 1841 Petzval presents the mathematical notes for his double lens to the Vienna Academy of Sciences. "Along with its considerable aperture, it was entirely aplanatic and had an angle of view of 30°…notes that were a masterpiece of mathematics". (Eder, 1932)
The large format camera Petzval used in making the portrait of the 1856 annual meeting (13). The camera was probably designed by Ignaz Heger (1824-1880) Full Professor of Mechanical Technology (27).
The camera built to test the lens Petzval had designed. Despite the simplicity of materials (cardboard and wood) one can intuit the basic ideas Voigtländer will use for his camera; Petzval's autograph with annotations about the portrait and landscape lenses in 1841.
A short excerpts from the third chapter: Petzval
… Peter Wilhelm Friedrich Voigtländer finished making Petzval's f/3.6 lens in May 1840. It was then tested with great success by Dr. Anton Martin of the Physics Department of the Vienna University before being sent to Paris the next year for the competition organized by the Société d'Encouragement (6). Martin was an expert in daguerreotype images because as soon as Ettingshausen returned from Paris, the director of the Vienna Polytechnic, Joseph Prechtl (1778-1854) invited him to devote himself to studying and to making them.
The optic Simon Plöss built him a camera based on Daguerre's and between 1839 and 1840 Martin produced a large number of daguerreotypes of still subjects (20). Vienna was struck by a fever of curiosity over the invention and the newspapers, primarily the Wiener zeitung, followed the developments very closely.
On November 2nd and December 8th, 1840, Ettingshausen presented Petzval's lens to the Niederösterreichischen Gewerbsverein (The Lower Austrian Trade Association) (23)...
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Footnotes:
(6) Eder J.M. History of Photography. 1932.
(13) Sitzungsberichte der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Wien 1857 (Proceedings of the conference of doctors and naturalists of the Imperial Academy of of Science, Vienna) 1857. Published in 1858. The drawing was published in the "Report on Dioptric Research" which Petzval presented at the conference and which was published in the proceedings of the meeting in 1857.
(20) Eder J.M. p. 281.
(23) Eder J.M. 1932. p. 293.
(27) Von Rhor p. 415.
