{"id":3711,"date":"2017-12-07T15:03:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T23:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/houseprovidence.org\/?p=3711"},"modified":"2017-12-07T15:03:12","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T23:03:12","slug":"the-history-of-hearing-aids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/househearing.com\/the-history-of-hearing-aids\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of Hearing Aids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hearing loss<\/strong> has long been a problem people in Los Angeles<\/strong> and around the world have long struggled with.<\/p>\n

For centuries, it was a commonly held assumption that those with hearing loss had other disabilities; because of this, they were often discriminated against.<\/p>\n

In the 16th<\/sup> century, a Spanish monk named Pedro Ponce was able to teach the deaf son of a nobleman how to read, write, speak and do math, thus dispelling this long-held belief.<\/p>\n

When Was the First Hearing Device Invented?<\/h2>\n

The first device used to help those with hearing loss<\/a> was invented in the 17th<\/sup> century; it was called an ear trumpet and came in a range of shapes and sizes and was constructed from a variety of materials such as sheet iron and animal horns.<\/p>\n

Frederick C. Rein was the first person to commercially produce these devices in the late 18th<\/sup> century. He also developed the accompanying acoustic headband, which was able to disguise the device in the user\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n

What About the First Hearing Aid?<\/h2>\n

\"\"Thanks to Alexander Graham Bell<\/a>\u2019s 1876 invention of the telephone, the technology was available to control loudness, frequency and distortion of sounds. This was instrumental in the soon to be invented hearing aid.<\/p>\n

In 1898, Miller Reese Hutchison created the first electric hearing aid.<\/a> His design used an electric current to amplify weak signals.<\/p>\n

In 1913 the first commercially manufactured hearing aids came to market. As you might expect, they were cumbersome and not very portable. Vacuum-tube hearing aids were produced in 1920; these tubes were able to turn speech into electric signals and then the signal itself was amplified.<\/p>\n

WWII brought about many technological advances, one of which was miniaturization. The transistor<\/a> was invented in 1948. Transistors were able to replace the vacuum tubes in hearing aids and were smaller, needed less battery power and had less distortion.<\/p>\n

The 1970s ushered in the invention of the microprocessor and multi-channel amplitude compression. The microprocessor brought miniaturization to a new level and the compression ushered in the use of digital technology.<\/p>\n

From that point on hearing aids began to evolve at a rapid pace. High-speed processors and microcomputers were created in the 1980s. All-digital hearing aids came to market in the 1990s. And in 2010 came Bluetooth\u00ae enabled devices.<\/p>\n

Want to be part of your own hearing aid story? Contact your Los Angeles audiologist<\/a> today.<\/p>\n

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