Evening star., 1939-10-29
Parade Of Gadgets
To Aid Hearing Gives
Audience Laughs
Clumsy Ear Trumpets
And Horns Shown
In Puntomime

Some 100 people sat in Barker
Hall last night and chuckled as
hobble- -skirted ladies and be-
whskered gentlemen, all hard of
hearing, strutted before them with
clumsy ear trumpets and horns of
. yesterday.
They had reason to chuckle, for,
though hard Of hearing themselves,
they carried none of the weird de-
vices that helped the people of pre-
vious generations to hear.
Some wore tiny concealed ear
pieces that brought sound to them
effortlessly. Others wore single ear
phones, the hearing aids of today.
So they had wonderful time
watching what their grandmothers
and greatgrandmothers did when
they wanted to hear a sweetheart's
tender nothings or the latest sewing
> circle gossip.
Beginning with Civil War times,
y when the only hearing aid was the
! hand cupping the ear and continu-
ing through to today when a girl
can go out on a date with her hear
!. ing instrument completely concealed.
: the Washington Society for the
!. Hard OF Hearing put on a pageant
IN pantomlme at the concluding
/ meeting of National Hearing Week.
y Interrupted by Ear Trumpet.
Z A young man, 1875, is shown call
; Ing on his girl friend. The loving
: couple look through an album to-
/. gether, constantly interrupted by
, the young man sticking a huge ear
> trumpet into the girls face to get
. her increasingly impatient explana-
ton of the pictures.
. Into a photographers studio in
, 1885 came man and wife intent
: on being tin-typed. Things are
, hampered no little by the ladys
hearing aid, an unwieldy she'll
/. shaped device attached to a long
, rubber tube. The photographer re-
: quests a smile and, the better to
hear him, she readjusts her hearing
: gadget. thereby running the pose.
!, 1t is very sad.
= In the gay nineties, when ladies
, really had something to gossip about
the sewing circle meets. They find
j.. they can't scream juicy tidbits into
the strange devices they hear
through and Thread needles too, so
they stop sewing.
New Devices niSnloyAd
= A League for the Hard of Hearing
garden party of 1913 is shown next
The different varieties of hearing
. aids. ranging from long horns to
qulverlng fans, interfere no end
with croquet game, which achieves
total disaster when a confused lady
swats her ball with her hearing aid
instead of the mallet Hobble- skirts
didn't help much either.
The march of hearing arrives at
1920. the era of long waists and
short skirts. Couples are shown
tox-trotting around a dance floor,
each equipped with portable radios
If it weren't 1920. The dancers are
forced to lift their boxes lovingly
into their partners faces to catch
the passing word.
The curtain falls last on "today's
date boy-meets-girl situation
complete with unnoticed hearing aid.
DR.. Raubicheck Speaks.
Before the pageant the audience
heard DR.. Letitia Raubicheck. di-
rector of speech improvement of
the New York City Board of Edu-
cation, discuss better speech. She
told the group that nobody uses his
lips sufficiently in speaking in
America and that chief faults to be
corrected were nasal or hoarse
voices. She pointed out that speech
is more than just words, but needs
such clues as facial expression and
voice quality to suggest the message.
Mrs. Laura Stovel, president of
the Washington Society, read let
ter from President Roosevelt, in
which he praised the group for its
service to better hearing.