I second John regarding Kingslakes's books.
Regarding old lens designs, "A History of the Photographic Lens" might be the first choice. Academic Press (1989) ISBN 0124086403
Contains little maths, but a great gallery of vintage lenses and short biographies of our beloved lens designers of the XIX-th and XX-st century.
Regarding the engineer's point of view, this book contains the basics of what optical engineers had to know, before the computer era. For those who want to know how a tessar design is computed "by hand" !
"Lens Design Fundamentals", 2-nd edition, Rudolf Kingslake and R. Barry Johnson, Academic Press (2009) ISBN 012374301X
Now for those who want to use an optical lens design software to simulate old lenses, this book is interesting
"Modern Lens Design", Warren Smith, McGraw-Hill Professional; 2nd edition (2004)
ISBN 0071438300
If you can read some French, I recommend Eric Beltrando's web site, with a collection of old lenses. From original patents, Eric Beltrando has re-computed their performance.
http://dioptrique.info/sommaire/sommaire.HTM
And you'll find an article dedicated to the Petzval lens, but there is a lot of text in French.
http://dioptrique.info/base/compleme.../petzval01.HTM
...........
http://dioptrique.info/base/compleme.../petzval08.HTM
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