Sebastião Leme
series of prototype cameras designed by Sebastião Carvalho Leme
Sebastião Carvalho Leme (13 July 1918 – 25 April 2007), was a photographer from Marília, São Paulo, Brazil. He is credited with inventing the Leme panoramic camera, a 360° camera.
Summary
In 1957, an entrepreneur requested a picture of his buildings, which stood at three of the corners of a street-crossing, and he wanted to show the group of buildings in one single photo, which would have to cover 360°. Using a Rolleiflex with a panoramic head, ten negatives were taken that, enlarged and mounted, resulted in a 360° photo. Leme then addressed the challenge of taking a 360° photo in a single negative.
The demonstration of his eventual solution consisted of a lens mounted in a small, empty tomato purée can, an internal device which is the principle of the invention, and a piece of film fixed inside the can. He tested it in front of the Senai building by rotating the lens by hand. The film, when developed, precariously confirmed that it was possible to take 360° photos.
The first prototype was entirely mechanical. Three prototypes were made, and they were improved over one year.
“Sebastião Leme” enters the record as series of prototype cameras designed by Sebastião Carvalho Leme. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sebastião, Leme and series can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6521111. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1918, 2007 and 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sebastião Leme” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.