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Hearing loss is not a modern problem. Doctors and scientists throughout history have come up with some creative, interesting, and helpful advances to assist people throughout history with their hearing.
Although exact dates are still quite ambiguous, ear trumpets were some of the only forms of hearing amplification from about mids. Ear trumpets came in many shapes and sizes but always had the general shape of a funnel, large on one side to catch sound waves, tapering down to a thinner tube to be inserted into the ear.
Although most of these ear trumpets were bulky and obnoxious, many brilliant inventors created ways to hide the ear trumpets into objects. Perhaps most notably, the King Goa chair was created by F. Rein in Rein continued to be a leader in early hearing loss when he created aurolese phones in These hearing devices were meant to be hidden, under hats and in hairstyles, or in the form of an ornate headband.
At the turn of the 20 th century, hearing aids began moving from mechanical to electrical. Borrowing technology from telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, the first electrical hearing aid, called the Akouphone — was invented by Miller Hutchinson in Many technologies were tried and tested throughout hearing aid history. In , Naval engineer Earl Hanson patented the first vacuum-tube hearing aid named the Vactuphone. The device used the telephone transmitter to convert speech into electrical signals, to then be amplified through the receiver.
It was so successful that vacuum tube hearing aids were available on the U. As is often the case with technology, competition to develop the best miniaturization techniques aided development. Devices became smaller and smaller throughout the s, were sold as wearable from , and quickly gained popularity amongst the public. At this time, the amplifier and batteries still needed to be worn around your neck and the microphone was hand-held with its size proportional to your level of hearing loss!
This meant that conversations had to be had news reporter-style — quite a funny thought for hearing aid users today. They came onto the scene in and quickly replaced vacuum tubes as they were demonstrably superior on many accounts. They required less battery power, produced less distortion and heat than vacuum tubes, and importantly, were smaller. However, manufacturers were so excited about the benefits transistors seemed to provide that they did not carry out adequate tests on their transistor hearing aids.
This led to the development of a protective coating and the silicon transistor, to combat problems caused by body heat. The microprocessor was created in , speeding up the journey towards the miniaturization of the hearing aid and bring hearing aid history into modern times. Edgar Villchur, a researcher, took this invention and went even further to ensure better hearing for those who needed it.
He developed an analog multi-channel amplitude compression device that allowed audio signal to be separated into frequency bands. These were able to adjust the analog sound non-linearly; this is where certain sounds could be amplified less and other sounds could be amplified more.
The s saw the development of high-speed digital-array processors to be used with minicomputers. However, it was only in that an all-digital, real-time, array processing hearing aid was developed at the City University of New York as a research tool for the exploration of digital signal processing.
Although it was a big step forward in hearing aid history, it was a rather bulky device. Inside, they had to pack in a minicomputer and a digital array processor, as well as an FM transmitter and receiver. The s ushered in the development of digital chips for high-speed digital signal processing. These enabled fast processing, but were too large and consumed too much power to be used in wearable hearing aids.
Over time, technology reduced these drawbacks to practical levels for a digital hearing aid, most notably through the work of Engebretson, Morley, and Popelka at the Central Institute for the Deaf CID.
When rolled around, the Nicolet Corporation brought the first commercial digital hearing aid to market, and surprisingly, to little commercial success. Nevertheless, Nicolet did prove one thing to the market — feasibility, and other companies took notice.
The race to develop viable digital hearing aids that would also be commercially successful had begun. It was an exciting time in hearing aid history.
Developments occurred at a rapid pace, and major hearing aid companies introduced hybrid instruments using analog amplifiers, filters, and limiters which were controlled digitally. Moving away from hearing aid history and into the 21st century, we can see that hearing aids have come to be much more widespread.
The collapsible ear trumpet was invented next in the late 18 th century. The first commercial device was created by Frederick C. Rein in The telephone included technology that could control the loudness, frequency and distortion of sounds, essential components of a hearing aid. In , Miller Reese Hutchison created the first electric hearing aid.
His design used an electric current to amplify weak signals. The first commercially manufactured hearing aids came to market in These devices were cumbersome and not very portable. Vacuum-tube hearing aids were produced in ; these tubes were able to turn speech into electric signals and then the signal itself was amplified.
WWII brought about many technological advances, one of which was miniaturization.
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