Carlo Poni was an Italian photographer and optician. He was born in Switzerland in approximately 1823 before moving to France. During his time in Paris, France he worked with the optician, Chauchois, studying photography. In ca. 1852 he moved to Venice Italy where he photographed and published an album of 160 photographs of Venetian architecture between 1854 and 1855, which were sold in his shop. He also sold a variety of optical equipment and reproductions of works of art, as well as inventing optical instruments designed to allow a greater experience of three-dimensionality in two-dimensional photographs, including the megalethoscope, the graphoscope, and the alethoscope, which was variously called a dioramascope or pontioscope. From 1860 to 1865 Ponti photographed Rome, Italy. Between 1857 and 1868 Ponti published and edited Carlo Naya's photographs, until a dispute which ended their relationship. In 1866 Ponti was also appointed optician and photographer to the King of Italy. Ponti died blind at age seventy-three.