The full story of the Daedalus class is not available yet. The Art of Star Trek shows an early Matt Jeffries design for the proposed "star" ship of the original Trek series, and a model Greg Jein made from it. (This is a desktop model seen in Sisko's DS9 office. I imagine it as a 24th century Franklin Mint object and some features - such as the gold band around the front of the secondary hull - are not on the starship.) The TOS Sketchbook and Making of Star Trek feature different sketches which I would like to turn into variations of the Daedalus, if not different classes. The Encyclopedia and Chronology feature Sternbach and Okuda's conjecture, more photos of the model, and a side view schematic from which I took the measurements for my model.
The 2163 year for first service is my own conjecture, a compromise between giving the Essex some history before being lost in 2167 and its NCC-173 indicating that that many ships had entered Starfleet before it. (As you can see, my conjecture is that many of the early Starfleet vessels were ships already in existance and donated by the founding members of the UFP). The appearance of a (fake) USS Dauntless NX-01-A in VOY:"Hope and Fear" seems to indicate that a Dauntless was NCC-01 or NX-01 - the first Starfleet ship and that the Federation had, perhaps, built up to a 173 ship strength by 2167.