Hearing Aids – A Brief History

As a long-time collector of antique medical devices, quackery, and medicines, I have always wanted to acquire an old ear trumpet. They show up on EBay from time-to-time, but are always too expensive, or being sold by some dubious person in Romania. Made of tin or hard rubber, these devices were the only thing available for the hearing impaired in the 17th century. The wealthy, of course, had ear trumpets made of gold or silver, encrusted with jewels. As primitive as these devices were, the larger ones did amplify sounds 40 dB or more, depending on the person shouting in to them.

Electronic hearing aids emerged shortly after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Mr. Bell is often credited for inventing the first hearing aid, but he never patented the device. The first commercial hearing aid, not unlike an old telephone, was produced by the Dictograph Company just prior to the turn of the last century. This was generations before transistors and efficient batteries, so they had huge vacuum tubes and needed to be plugged to the wall. It cost about $400, at a time where you could by a house for this amount in some areas of the country. These early devices only amplified sounds 20-30dB, at best, so ear trumpets were still being used by some your great-grandparents.

By World War II, batteries were smaller and infinitely better, allowing for smaller hearing aids. When I started practicing medicine, the idea that a device in the future could be implanted in the human body to restore hearing would have been pure science fiction. I was born in 1951. The first transistor-based hearing aid was manufactured in 1952. The only assisted-hearing devices available in my youth were devices that just amplified sound – a microphone and a speaker. Many people used a simple device the size of a pack of cards tucked into their front pockets with a very obvious wire leading to their ear(s) with a plain ‘ol earplug. The batteries were lousy and only lasted a day at best.

My first experience seeing a child with a hearing aid was Lori, a little four-year old with cerebral palsy, when I worked a volunteer at Easter Seals while in high school. Lori, now married with children of her own, would laugh if she saw this antique hearing device. If manufactured today, with today’s technology, they would cost under a dollar. In mid-1960′s, the “state of the art” devices were transistorized with small batteries, and located behind the ear. Even then, Lori’s hearing aid was so big that it flared her ears outward. Later, she received an “in-the-ear” model, again made possible by even smaller and more efficient batteries.

Next came directional microphones, integrated circuits that allowed environmental sounds to be filtered from speech, to the high-tech, digital, programmable, remote-controlled hearing aids that we have now. These devices are nearly invisible powered by tiny, highly-efficient button batteries. My 90 year-old father-in-law has such a device provided by the Veterans Administration. He lived with us for nearly half a year after he had surgery and was always losing it and accusing the dog of eating it (that happens!).

The rapid advances in hearing aid technology are mind-boggling. For those people out there with hearing difficulties who are considering buying a cheap hearing aid from a magazine ad, you are missing the boat (or at least the sound of the boat). See a good audiologist and have a proper hearing assessment and discuss the right hearing aid for you. We don’t all wear the same type of shoes…wear the same eyeglasses. When it comes to hearing properly, you deserve the best that medical science can offer. Yes, these high-tech devices can be expensive, and unfortunately, financial barriers will always be an issue. I wish that it wasn’t.

In 1984, the FDA approved an assisted-hearing device quite different than anyone ever imagined – the Cochlear Implant, the topic of my next Blog.

For more on the History of Hearing Aids, read: