Edwin Leigh invented the idea of a pronouncing orthography or phonetic alphabet, which was sometimes called Pronouncing Print.

Leigh graduated from Harvard in 1850 and took a position as an assistant to Professor Louis Agassiz, lecturing students in natural history. His pronouncing orthography was inspired by Isaac Pitman's 1844 Fonotypy or Phonotypic Alphabet which became Pitman's "Shorthand."

Leigh won the Medal of Progress at the Vienna Exposition of 1873 for his invention of Pronouncing Orthography.