What is the earliest evidence for the use of hearing aids?

score:3

Accepted answer

From Kenneth W. Berger's The Hearing Aid:

Several centuries before Christ the Greeks brought a variety of large shells to Phoenicia. They hardened these with paint and used them as acoustical cornets.... [pp. 8]

Strange bronze objects which were found near Pompeii are supposed to have been used by the Romans as acoustical cornets. ... Archigenes... [circa 100 A.D.] believed that a loud sound, conducted into the ear by means of a "tuba" would stimulate the auditory system (Feldmann, 1970) [A History of Audiology]. [pp. 8]

Girolamo Cardano's Du Subtilitate, published in Nuremberg in 1551.... described how sound may be transmitted to the ear by means of a rod or the shaft of a spear held between one's teeth. [pp. 18]

The oldest known graphical representation of a hearing aid device is a seventeenth century engraving [the one included in the question]... in a 1674 publication by Athanasius Kircher. [pp. 8]

One other possibly useful entry in the bibliography, despite the alarming question mark, is GΓΌttner, W. History of the Hearing Aid. SRW Nachrichten, No. 21, 23-24, 1966(?) [sic].

EDIT: Several uncited texts online claim that Alcmaeon of Croton constructed an ear trumpet, and an answer establishing that would be better yet.

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