Hearing Aid
name: label: maker
content: Dictograph Products Company
notes: label: Description
content: Miller Reese Hutchison (1876-1944) was an electrical engineer who developed the Acousticon carbon microphone hearing aid in 1902 and showed an example at the St. Louis International Exhibition of 1904. In 1905 Hutchison transferred the rights for the Acousticon to Kelly Monroe Turner (1859–1927), proprietor of the newly established General Acoustic Company. That firm boasted in New York Times (Sept. 30, 1906) that the Acousticon “is to the ear what the telescope is to the eye.”
label: Description
content: Turner made further improvements to hearing aids and applied the technology to other products. One such was the dictograph, an early inter-office intercom system. By 1919, the General Acoustic Company had become the Dictograph Products Company, and Acousticon had become a division of that firm.
label: Description
content: This hearing aid, donated to the Smithsonian in 1939, is an Acousticon Type 8394 with a bone conduction head piece with band attached, and amplifier. An inscription reads in part “GENERAL ACOUSTIC / NEW YORK.”
label: Description
content: Ref: Howell W. Haff, “Telephone-Transmitter, U.S. Patent 874,004 (Oct. 28, 1902), assigned to General Acoustic Company.
label: Description
content: “Miller Hutchinson, Inventor, 67, Dead,” <i>New York Times</i> (Feb. 18, 1944), p. 17.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, New York City
label: Associated Place
content: United States: New York, New York City
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dictograph Products Company, Inc.
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MG.M-04750
label: catalog number
content: M-04750
label: accession number
content: 151789
objectType: label: Object Name
content: hearing aids
label: Other Terms
content: Medicine
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 1/2 in x 2 in x 5 in; 8.89 cm x 5.08 cm x 12.7 cm