‘Even a hair fall will sound like a thunder’, the ads will mesmerize one with hearing impaired with the galley full of gadgets.
The old time joke like bucket for ticket and the like will never be repeated by the young and old with difficulties in hearing.
Characteristics and effects. For most animals, the acoustic reflex is the contraction of both middle ear muscles: the stapedius and tensor tympani muscles. … The contraction of the stapedius muscle occurs bilaterally in normal ears, no matter which ear was exposed to the loud sound stimulation.
To my memory the first known hearing aid must be the trumpet and the long tube bugle.
These I used to see in War movies and when the kings come in procession and in temples during big festivals.
I had tasted the sound of band and bugle within the Doppler circles while in NCC
The blare used to deafen the ears especially the blast of gelatine in pyrotechnic, thanks to Alfred Nobel. I think he had bequeathed his assets for those who had lost their capacity of hearing, which later was trickily transferred in funding other activities.
Like lose of hearing they all lost the monetary compensation as well.
Then Graham Bell invented the telephone and the hearing aid became the one end of the handset.
Let us not forget Samuel Finley Breese Morse who pioneered the sweet sound of the Morse Key, ‘tik tik tiktitik tik’ the Dot dash and dash dash dot dot and in between squeezed all the 26 alphabets that could transmit messages miles long. Not a single day while going to school I had missed these melodies emerging from the wayside post office and I used to wonder at the dexterity of the nimble fingers which could transmit messages. Morse did not leave the numbers and he codified 1 to 0 by a combination of five movements of fingers for 5, with five dots and for 0 with five dashes. Wahl! Even octave of music has 7 letters only, this melody is unique.
He found a melody in the distress call with three dots three dashes and again with three dots.
Now that sound system is a museum piece. In between came the eerie noise making teleprinter and then the dot matrix printers.
The hearing aids have flooded the world markets with contraptions of various sizes and to fill the manufacturer’s pockets. They come with many names as doodah, gubbins, dingus, gizmo and many like that.
Like the inverters in which the batteries get recharged, like boosters for voltage drops, the decibels that get increased systematically the varieties are aplenty. It’s just like searching for transmitting towers to get a clear sound for mobiles.
Like the pictures of ape changing into a full grown man, the devices can be arranged according to the size, from a miniscule mustard seed size to an ear size. They play hide and seek in your ear, either permanently implanted like a pace maker to the visible common man attire, hanging behind the earlobes like ‘Betal’ in Vikramaditya stories.
Having heard all sorts of sound from trumpets, musical percussions and strings and not to dismiss the expletives in street corners and Bar outlets, the ear drum has suffered many agonies and enjoyed as well all these in the inner heart, the drum cover had lost its temper and to rejuvenate the dying drum man struggles with all sorts of devices to hide his incapability as he or she feels it as a dig for their dignity. Like a man who struggles to walk is adamant in not carrying the walking stick and instead searching for a drone to help him guide his way without toppling, the hearing aids are virtually cheating you and fills the coffers of others silently. The battery will drain the purse.
Taiwan and China may even make hearing aids of ultrasonic and infrasonic sound level for bats and elephants.
Those who are capable to hear, please close it with a small ball of cotton to escape from the blares and cacophony.
What all we had learned in Physics under sound becomes useless when we lose the hearing capacity.
Think of being a grandpa sitting with his grandson on the slopes of a hillock and when he points out his little finger on to a jet liner flying far away, you may look at him and smile with a deep rooted feeling that the kid cannot understand.
By Sundareswaran Date: 1st October 2018.
Will I not be making a grave mistake if I do not mention about Ludwig Van Beethoven?
‘The man whose whole being breathed beauty in sound, whose inmost thoughts created sublime harmony, had to live his last part of life in deafness. What an irony it is to lead such a fate.
He wrote colossal masterpieces, the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, which he heard only in his brain. He played with the keyboard of his piano and composed overtures and piano and violin concerts.
In one occasion, the hands of the pianist on the dais swept up the keyboard in a last passionate crescendo. Then the music died away, peacefully, almost breathlessly.
There was a moment of tense silence, followed by a crashing wave of applause. The room rang in echoed with enthusiastic approval.
The man at the piano made no movement. He sat there, crouched and unconscious of it all. Then an elderly man approached the immovable figure and turned him around that he might see his audience; placed him so that he might see the applause. For the pianist who had just finished translating the sublime tone poetry of his own emotions was almost stone deaf! He looked at the shouting people with pathos and nobility; his lips moved dumbly. That was all!’
Quoted from the ‘100 Great lives’ by John Canning.
My Cranky Writings 