David Ragge was already interested in Orthoptera songs when he joined the Natural History Museum, London, in 1952. Only in the early seventies could a proper acoustic laboratory be built with the necessary equipment for fully exploiting these sounds for identification and taxonomic research. In 1973 the laboratory was completed (on the top of the Spirit Building, now demolished), and Jim Reynolds was appointed to help David research and record insect songs. The laboratory remained in use until 1998.