The Benedictine Father Marcello Pellegrino Ernetti (d. 1997) invented a method of recovering sound waves from the past and converting them into visual and acoustic reconstruction of history. Father Ernetti, a professor at the Venetian Benedetto Marcello Conservatory and Fondation Cini (and director of the Italian Conservatory of Religious Instruction for Men), accomplished his research in collaboration with 12 physicists who remain anonymous. In 1956, Father Ernetti began to investigate the possibility of reviewing the past with a television-like device. In 1957 he began collaborating with the Portuguese Professor de Matos, who was researching the same problem.
Ernetti's theoretical approach was based on Aristotle's concept of the disintegration of sound, according to which light and sound waves do not disappear after being produced, but are transformed in some way and remain present indefinitely. According to Ernetti, sound waves subdivide into harmonics that can be recovered with appropriate instruments.