America Online, Inc. The Neurophone is a new electronic invention that may enable us to hear by a completely new information channel to the brain.
Ordinary hearing is the result of the stimulation of bones in the inner ear by means of vibration.
Sound waves may reach these bones through ear canal via the ear drum, or by bone conduction in which sound waves are conducted to the inner ear vibrations in the crainial bones. When the sound waves reach the inner ear, a vibration is set up in the cochlea which then converts the waves into nerve inpulses that travel up the 8th Crainial Nerve to the sound recognition centers of the brain. In 1958, Dr Flanagan, then a child of 14 developed a radio transmitter that made the brain into a radio reciever. This device transmits acoustic information to the brain by means of radio waves into the skin, bypassing the 8th Crainial Nerve. When he applied for a patent on the device, the patent examiner rejected the whole thing saying that such a device would go against all known laws of science.