Originally Posted by
Steven Tribe
Absolutely sure (almost)!
There was a complete link between the opticians of the period who were making telescopes at the time and the first lens makers. Chevalier was making lenses for telescopes long before he did them for the early photo experimenters.
There is an interesting website where a researcher has access to sophisticated optical analyses. He "borrowed" about 30 pre-1820 telescopes from collections around the USA - split them up and did individual studies of the singles lenses and the front achromat. The front objective "achromats" turned out to live up to their description - well almost! I admire Petzval's achievement, but I think he basically accepted the formulation of the well-tried front achromat in his design and then restricted his calcuations to the degrees of freedom available with the double lens pair at the back in order to boost the speed.
I can find the website link if there is interest?