Today, hearing aids are small enough to sit behind your ear or slip in your ear canal, but they weren’t always so diminutive or discreet. If you used a hearing aid in the 1930s and 1940s, you wouldn’t just have a receiver in your ear—that receiver would be connected to two bulky units: one piece for the large electronic components, and another for the even larger batteries.
These devices amplified sound much better than earlier hearing devices, but they were incredibly cumbersome. Thankfully, technological developments made during World War II soon helped manufacturers on their march to miniaturize hearing aids. One of the first of these new, smaller models was the Paravox VERI-small. How small was it? According to Paravox, it was small enough for women to hide in their hair.
Hearing Aids: From Incredibly Cumbersome to Inconspicuous
The problem—and, eventually, the solution—was vacuum tubes. In the 1930s, hearing aid manufacturers started using vacuum tubes as amplifiers. These electronic devices amplified sound better than their predecessors, but they also required batteries. Big batteries. These batteries could be the size and shape of a ten dollar roll of quarters or even a pack of cigarettes—and you needed two.
This was a big change. The electrical components in earlier carbon-type hearing aids hadn’t needed so much voltage, so both the batteries and the components could fit in a unit about the size of a pack of index cards. But vacuum tubes needed a lot of voltage, and even a case that size wasn’t large enough to hold both the tubes and the batteries they required. Instead, vacuum tube devices used two cases: one for the microphone and amplifier, and another for the batteries, connected by a cord. The size of the cases varied by manufacturer and model, but both cases were typically about the size of a pack of cigarettes, if not larger.
Users wore the two-piece aids by carrying them in pockets, on belts, or in specially-constructed pouches that strapped to the torso or thigh. Another cord connected the two pieces to a receiver worn in the ear. The devices were awkward, bulky, and testament to the fact that cutting-edge technology isn’t always more convenient.
However, smaller vacuum tubes and batteries were developed during World War II, and soon became commercially available. The vacuum tubes had thinner but stronger filaments and because of their reduced size, they required less battery voltage. Less voltage meant even smaller batteries, and smaller batteries meant hearing aid components could not only fit in one case again, they would quickly become smaller than ever before.
“…So Small, You Can Hide It in a HAIR-DO”
True to its name, the Paravox VERI-small was very small—for the time. The “one-case, one-cord” body aid, first manufactured in 1948, housed the electronic components and batteries in a case that was the size of a deck of cards at 2.375″ wide, 3.5″ long, and 0.5″ deep. With batteries, the device weighed 4.5 ounces, or about as much as two decks of cards. Compared to the two-piece models, the VERI-small was at least half as large, half as heavy, and had half as many cords.
Certainly the reduction in size and weight meant the device was more convenient to wear or carry, but Paravox went a step further, claiming the VERI-small was so small and so light that women could hide the device in their hair.
In a brochure titled “My Secret,” Paravox promised women they could gain a “new kind of ‘Hidden Hearing’” and showed two ways they could hide the VERI-small in a hair-do. Key to both methods was the Paravox Hair-Do Garment, which consisted of a pouch for the hearing aid attached to an adjustable elastic band. Depending on how you styled your hair, the VERI-small could be worn at the nape of the neck or the crown of the head.
With these instructions, Paravox claimed they had solved “the vexing problem of women”—namely, how to hide a hearing aid while wearing a swimsuit or form-fitting dress. Typically, if you wore a body aid in a pocket or strapped to your body, the cord leading to the receiver in your ear would be visible. By wearing the VERI-small in her hair, however, a woman could also hide the cord to the button receiver in their ear and appear “normal.”
Was this more convenient? Almost certainly not.
No matter how “firmly” or “comfortably” Paravox claimed the VERI-small could be worn in one’s hair, doing so was not easier than simply wearing the device in a pocket or a pouch, nor was it necessary.
Yet, the prejudiced message that people who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing should do everything possible to hide their disability was not uncommon in the mid-twentieth century. Paravox’s “My Secret” brochure not only provides instruction on “how a woman may skillfully conceal her hearing loss,” it includes testimony from one user that claims the device even works better this way: “I truly hear much better with the instrument hidden in my hair…” The advertisement is peppered with language that not only suggests the user could conceal their disability and her hearing aid, but advises that she should.
Thanks to technological advancements, the VERI-small was one of the smallest and lightest hearing aids on the market when it debuted in 1948. The “one-case, one-cord” design was also less cumbersome and more convenient to wear than earlier two-piece aids—unless you did as Paravox suggested and tried to hide it in your hair.
From today’s perspective, it seems shocking that manufacturers suggested that a hearing aid the size of a deck of cards—as small as it was for the time—could be hidden in a hairstyle. Yet for years hearing aid manufacturers paradoxically continued to design and promote their products in ways that encouraged the d/Deaf and hard of hearing to sacrifice convenience in favor of camouflage.
Sources
Berger, Kenneth, W. The Hearing Aid: Its Operation and Development. Detroit, MI: The National Hearing Aid Society, 1970.
Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) Records: Hearing Device Manufacturers’ Promotional Materials, Correspondence, and Reports, 1925-1974, undated, RG032-S06, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives, Washington University in St. Louis.
The Central Institute for the Deaf-Max A. Goldstein Historic Devices for Hearing Collection, VC703, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives, Washington University in St. Louis.