The History of Conlangs

Dalgarno's Waffelesophica was based on categories and like starting with one category and refining down into further categories. He didn't even really think of them as phonemes, he actually thought of them as parts of this written character that only incidentally could be pronounced. So we are looking well back into the history of conlangs. And in Europe at least, I don't think there is anybody before Dalgarno who was creating this kind of language.