Megan Watts Hughes

She was born Megan Watts in Dowlais, Glamorgan[shire],[3] a historic county in southern Wales, to parents who had relocated from Pembrokeshire.

Following early success as a singer on the South Wales concert circuit, she obtained singing lessons from two leading Cardiff musicians, and in 1864 began studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where her teachers included Manuel García.

[10] In 1885, while exercising her voice, she accidentally discovered what she called "voice-figures" or "voice-flowers", patterns created by the natural phenomenon of standing-wave resonance.

She described the process which began with sand and/or lycopodium powder and later "flooding the disk of the eidophone with a thin layer of liquid, e.g., water or milk.

Using her own photography and diagrams (pictured on the right), the article described her process and her invention in detail:In 1885, while seeking means to indicate readily the intensities of vocal sounds, I first met with these [voice] figures, and, owing to their variety both in form and production, they have since absorbed much of my attention.

[11][13]This process would later be linked to the independent invention of research begun by Ernst Chladni, who used powder rather than liquid to facilitate the visual patterns.

[12] British biophysicist Jill Purce investigated the effects of vibration on particles and water, following up on the findings of Chaldni and Watts Hughes.