Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec  Issue 2010

www.hearingaidinstitute.com

We have two patient spot lights for this issue of the newsletter. The first patient is Mr. Warren Hiebert

Warren was born in California, but grew up in Indiana and Nebraska. He has lived in Montana for 25 years. Warren has been married to his wife, Lois, for 43 years. Together they have one daughter, one son, and 6 grandchildren, one of them being adopted from the Phillipines.

Warren is a full time chaplin and has worked for many law enforcement agencies including the Gallatin County Sherrifs' Office and the Bozeman Police Department.

Warren said, "The hearing loss in both my ears was getting progressively worse. I was frustrated with only hearing parts of the conversation and felt I was missing a lot of important information in meetings. For many years I put up with not having hearing aids. I finally decided to get a hearing test! I contact HAI because

of an advertisement with a special coupon. The first few months it was difficult for me to adjust. I was hoping to hear the quietest conversation or an elk passing by a half mile away. HAI continued to work with me and the hearing aids have made a difference in my life. What a blessing! I have found HAI to be knowledgeable with up-to-date technology, the staff is kind and caring, and the repair service, when needed, is fast and reliable. All in all it has been a very positive experience."

Fred Betz of Billings, our second patient, says, "I have been particularly pleased by your staff's friendliness and quick response to my 'drop ins' to make adjustments to the settings on my hearing aids. These adjustments have been very helpful in my ability to hear clearly and to differentiate spoken words in group conversations. Thank you again for all the help and support."

Thank you both Warren and Fred. We here at HAI hope you continue to enjoy hearing the beauty of life.

History of Hearing Aids

From their size to their shape to the way in which they function, the hearing aid technology today is very different from what hearing aids used 100, 50, or even five years ago. The history of hearing aids is far reaching and colorful. The earliest hearing aids worked without electricity, while the earliest electric models were simply too large to be portable. Today, digital hearing aids are discrete, lightweight, and have the capability to be adjusted for different environments and to amplify sound without distortion. The future holds many exciting improvements to hearing aid technology as a whole. It is important to review the history of hearing aids in order to understand just where the industry is headed.

We start our look at the history of hearing aids two hundred years ago, when aids came in the form of ear trumpets, large horn shaped devices used to direct sound into the ear of a hearing-impaired person and provide very basic sound amplification without electricity. These trumpets were large and awkward, although some models could be work on the head attached by a harness. They performed one basic function, sound amplification, and they could also improve the signal-to-noise ratio in a noisy enviroment, but they were not able to do much else. In fact cuping your hand behind your ear gives similar amplification. Hearing aid technology has certainly come a long way since this time.

Hearing aid technology started to change rapidly with two important milestones in the history of hearing aids. The invention

of electricity and Alexander Graham Bell's work on the telephone, which was essentially a machine that could electronically amplify sound via a carbon microphone in combination with a battery. Modern hearing aid technology still utilizes the concept of a receiver, a telephone component, to describe the tiny speaker inside the hearing aid.

In the early 1920s hearing aid technology incorporated the use of vacuum tubes, which allowed a much more efficient method for amplifying sound. But the early electrical hearing aids were still far to unwieldy to be carried around easily, many were as large as desk radios and just as heavy. Luckly an important development in the history of hearing aids was just around the corner.

One of the first major changes in the history of hearing aids that led to a decrease in their size was the miniaturization of batteries. Previously batteries were large, heavy, and could not hold a charge for very long, making them impractical for hearing aid use. Battery packs had to be work on the hearing impaired persons body. By the 1930s hearing aid technology had progressed so that aids could be portable.

However the most important event in the history of hearing aids was yet to come. It was the invention of the transistor in the 1950s that changed hearing aid technology completely. A transistor is simply a switch that has no moving parts and has only two settings, on or off. Put multiple transistors together however and you can get incrementally larger

Continued on next page

History of Hearing Aids Cont.

combinations of on/off switches, the basis for binary code, and essentially a computer in it's simplest form. Additionally a transistor's conductivity can be manipulated based on the purity of the silicon with which the transistor is made, providing an infinite number of possibilities for which the transistor can be used. Silicon transistors allowed hearing aids to shrink in size so they can become "body aids," eventually leading to hearing aid technology available in a size that we are familiar with today.

By the mid-1990s digital hearing aid technology was in common use. Digital hearing aid allowed for more precise shaping of the sound into the wearer's ear. With digital circuitry, the sound could be amplified or dampened as needed. Programs could be created that could be utilized depending upon the users location or needs. Digital products also took advantage of compression technology, eliminating an annoying side effect that plagued users throughout the history of hearing aids, the distortion of very loud sounds.

Today we are still shaping the history of hearing aids, and hearing aid technology is constantly being updated. For example new technologies are being introduced that allow the user to be directly involved with the fitting of his or her hearing aids. Instead of using basic prescriptions based on the user's audiogram, testing can be performed to hone the hearing aid settings for the specific user. From listening to a narrow band of sounds and making loudness judgements to filling out

a questionnaire with specific information, users are able to modify their hearing aid settings to suit their needs.

Just as the history of hearing aids has seen many developments, the future of hearing aids will bring extremely exciting new options for all users. Transducers are getting smaller, and at the same time circuitry is shrinking rapidly. This means that even smaller more powerful hearing aids will be able to be produced. Customers will find themselves in control of their own hearing again. We have come a long way from ear trumpets, but hearing aid technology is continuing to evolve with time, and we still have a long way to go.

Bernt Bellerud enjoying a Baskin Robins ice cream code at the Bozeman office.