The modern hearing aid owes its meager beginnings to ancient man who devised tools from indigenous materials to help with hearing. However, with modern technology, hearing aids are now totally different and don't rely on large funnels and trumpets. New technology has brought up digital hearing aids that "listen" to sounds, convert them to digital data, amplify the digital data, and then convert it back to sound that a person can hear. All of this in real-time! But centuries ago, hearing aid were quite different.
Trumpets And Horns
The hand cupped behind the ear was likely the beginning of the history of hearing aids. Technically, the outer ear is shaped like a cupped hand, trapping sound and channeling it to the organs that actually do the hearing in the inner ear. But the hand cupped behind the ear brings the sound even more directly to the ear. Once that was figured out, then the history of hearing aids made specifically to amplify faint sounds began.
The first made hearing aids were most likely seashells, hollowed out animal horns or tubes of bark. The first ones were most likely quite fragile, and it took centuries of trial and error before sturdier ones could be made. When they were, they were made of metal or flexible tubing, they were shaped like trumpets and bells. Sometimes it looked as if the deaf person was putting an oversized pipe in his or her ear. This is typically what you see in movies set in time periods from centuries ago.
The history of hearing aids is about making sounds louder than they probably really are. Some of the oldest surviving hearing aids are from the 1700's. One of the most famous users of a hearing aid trumpet was the great composer Beethoven, although it did not prevent him from becoming completely deaf.
Not much changed in the history of hearing aids during the 1800's, except that the horns looked more like musical horns or ram's horns than a pipe. A popular hearing aid of the time was called the London Dome and came in many sizes and outer ornamentation.
Changes in Hearing Aid Design
About 1899, the most advanced hearing aids in the world ran on carbon batteries. They looked a bit like the first telephones, large and with a lot of wires. The batteries usually lasted only about twelve hours. The whole contraption was worn as a large necklace. Even an electric version that came out in the 1920's did little to improve things.
The real turning point in the history of hearing aids came in the 1950's with electric transistor hearing aids. Now hearing aids were smaller, lighter and more reliable. As their name implied, they worked using the same technology of transistor radios.
In 1984, digital technology produced the latest wave of hearing aids. This was the start of the modern hearing aid. Combining digital technology with the micro-processor, allowed the hearing aid to shrink in size. They became more comfortable to wear and less cumbersome to use. The newest hearing aids are so small as to fit completely inside the ear canal.
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