Kat, the article explains that he was a man of the written, rather than spoken, word (he was a printer and proofreader), and influenced by Daguerre's technique of reproducing optical images on paper, he wanted to develop a graphical sound recording, a so-called "phono-autograph", or "sound-photo".

His device was cranked manually, which of course caused variations in the modern reproduction of the sound, but the team got over that by splitting their process into many individual steps.

Don