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Essay / The Evolution of Hearing Aids
"Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essayHearing aids are very interesting pieces of technology. The very first looked like a kind of musical instrument placed inside the ear. Today it is a small plastic device that can go unnoticed by those around you and be several times more effective. went from a large metal horn to a small piece of plastic? It all started with the telephone developed by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. In 1876, many people with hearing problems found it easier to hear. thanks to the Bell telephone since the handset was close to the ear However, Thomas Edison thought of a better idea and in 1878 developed a carbon transmitter for the telephone which amplified the signal sent to it. was on the right track with electrical signal amplification, speech was only amplified by about 15 decibels and the device was still big and heavy – barely. something practical. To get a better perspective of decibels in terms of speech, a person raises their voice 30 decibels to allow the hearing impaired to hear. In 1907, Lee De Forest's vacuum tube hearing aids produced 70 decibels of amplification, which far exceeded 15 decibels. decibel amplification created by Edison. Even though this model exceeded that of its predecessor, it weighed 100 kg and remained very bulky – difficult to transport for daily use. The main point of this model was to prove that speech could be amplified without a person raising their voice. However, in 1924 this 100 kg was reduced to 4 kg and allowed the device to fit in a small wooden box. With these advances in vacuum tubes, the hearing aid was finally portable; however, few people wanted to carry it because they did not want others to know about their hearing loss. The first wearable hearing aid was developed by Aurex Corp. in 1938 and consisted of a small earpiece and a wire connected to a clip-on amplifier. /receiver. This design was only made possible by Norma Krim's development of subminiature vacuum tubes which required less power in addition to their smaller size. This product became much more popular in the market because it was more hidden from people's view when using it; however, they still had to use a strap-on battery. In 1948, Bell Telephone Laboratories invented the transistor which allowed the production of transistorized hearing aids. This invention paved the way for more compact models where the batteries, amplifier and microphone were combined into one small unit. The only problem with these models was that they were still difficult to hide when in use. It wasn't until the late 1950s that hearing aids could be worn entirely in the ear. The Otarion Listener developed by Otarion Electronics in the late 1950s was the first hearing aid that could be worn entirely in the ear by storing electronic parts in glasses. This idea of a glasses-infused hearing aid began to catch on because it was much more convenient to wear and easier to conceal. Even people with perfect eyesight wore these glasses-infused hearing aids because of their concealment. Zenith Radio then developed a behind-the-ear model in 1964 that weighed only 7 grams. This device consists of an integrated circuit amplifier, a 1.2 V button cell battery and a microphone. Basically everything except the microphone is bundled into one"