I have been looking up "the history" of the phone-films, and have discovered the following recorded facts:-
An English inventor, Mr Grindell Matthews, first conceived the idea of printing a sound record on the edge of a film, thus ensuring perfect synchronism between action and sound.
Since then we have Lee de Forest's Phono-film, the American Movietone, and the British Phototone, all based on the same principle, as well as the American Vitaphone, which is based on the synchronisation of a film and a record.
The first person, however, to record music on a film, and to reproduce it by the action of light on selenium, was neither British nor American. He was a German named Ernest Ruhmer who also gave one of the first demonstrations of television.
The Irish Times, May 13th, 1929.