The Audiphone

Abstract

THE instrument which is now being introduced into this country under the name of the audiphone, is the invention of Mr. R. G. Rhodes of Chicago. It is intended, as its name attempts to indicate, to provide the deaf with the means of hearing, and is for some persons undoubtedly a more efficient aid than the hearing-trumpet. The figures appended show the original form of the instrument, and the modification of it suggested by Prof. Colladon of Geneva. The American audiphone consists of a thin elastic plate or sheet of hard ebonite rubber, furnished with a handle, and about the size and shape of an ordinary palm-leaf fan. The strings attached to the upper edge serve to bend it into a curving form, and a small clamp fixes the string at the handle. When thus strained into shape, the instrument is pressed against the upper front teeth by the deaf operator, the convex side being turned outwards. The sounds received upon the thin sheet cause it to vibrate, and the vibrations are thus conveyed through the teeth and bones of the skull to the auditory nerves. Its use is therefore confined to the partially deaf, or at least to those in whom the auditory sense is not entirely absent, or the nerve atrophied.