It may take some effort to copy the following as an uninterrupted URL, but if you can do it, you will be able to read a Google Book entry from the Journal of the Society of Arts that is somewhat reminiscent of Leonville-Scott's work (and just bit of Rube Goldberg):
http://books.google.com/books?id=8AIwAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=stenographic
+letter&source=bl&ots=IM3sN-sx5d&sig=iUYcbAcl4hH9WT6iNTFJxVbVkNU&hl=en&ei=KtDES9fmPIH_8Aafu9TADw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDEQ6AEwCA#v=onepa
If you cannot make this work, try putting "Stenographic letter" into a Google search. This what I was looking for, in a quest completely unrelated to sound recording or archiving, when the above link popped up.
What it shared with Scott is the focus on the recording of sound (speech) in graphic form, apparently without thought of reconstituting the recorded sound in an audible format. The images that Mr. Almgill's narrative summon up are pretty humorous, and it seems that he was venturing out on a tangent by tracing the movement of the lips and tongue rather than the vibrations of the vocal cord, but I found it interesting to see the workings of an obviously inventive mind of the mid 19th century.
All my best,
Peter Hirsch
NYPL
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