Mara Mills

Hearing Aids and the History of Electronics Miniaturization

Electrical hearing aids were the principal site for component miniaturization and compact assembly before World War II. After the war, hearing aid users became the first consumer market for printed circuits, transistors, and integrated circuits. Due to the stigmatization of hearing loss, users generally demanded small or invisible devices. In addition to being early adopters, deaf and hard of hearing people were often the inventors, retailers, and manufacturers of miniaturized electronics.

Deaf Jam From Inscription to Reproduction to Information

DOI 10.1215/01642472-2009-059

Introduction: Audio/Visual

A/V” seems to belong to the always-already obsolete. Even at the height of the craze for “audiovisual aids” in the mid-twentieth century, its association with the humble schoolroom and the “A/V geek” gave the acronym an air of the outmoded. Overtaken, in quick succession, by “multimedia” and “new media” at the end of the century, the audiovisual seems all the more rudimentary, remedial rather than remediated, or simply a minor component of larger media systems. Disciplines Art and Design | History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology | Science and Technology Studies This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/hss_papers/6 Grey Room 43, Spring 2011, pp. 6–15.