Carlos Ponti was born in Switzerland around 1823. He studied photography in Paris in the late-1840s and settled in Venice after 1848. In 1852 he obtained a license to produce and sell photographs. He ran the first of the big photographic businesses in the city, producing albums with architectural views. In 1866, he became the official photographer to King Victor Emanuel II of Italy. He became known as a maker of camera lenses for panoramic photography and was inventor of the megalethoscope.