Wayne's World

The Hearing Aid Ethics Inquisition – Conclusion My past several blog postings have been focused on the hurdles that the first audiologists working for hearing aid manufacturers were faced with, especially as they related to the Ethical Practice Board of the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA).  This post provides the conclusion to this phase of what I have called

The Scarlet Letter As noted in last week’s post, ASHA was determined  to ensure their personal biases that audiologists would not be employed in the hearing aid industry and functioning as audiologists.  And, then, in September 1973, came….THE infamous mailing from ASHA, identified by many as “The Scarlet Letter,” as it related to audiology and hearing aid involvement. (Comments and underline were

A Major Obstacle to Early Audiologists in Industry – Or, Harassment With the Intent to Discredit   The ink on my agreement with Telex wasn’t even dry before the hatchet started to fall.  Telex, in keeping with their company policy related to hirings, had sent ASHA an employment opportunity description to be published in the ASHA Trends. To this, ASHA sent

From the Academic to the Independent Entrepreneurial World In 1972 I was teaching at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire.  This was part of my plan to move further west.  (Well, Eau Claire was further west than East Lansing, Michigan).  Being in charge also of the hearing clinic, I was at times contacted by local hearing aid dealers or

Learning About Audiology and Hearing Aids – On My Own I started University teaching at the ripe old age of 24 at the University of North Dakota.  I had been offered numerous interesting jobs, partly because I was one of those rare people who had certification in both audiology and speech pathology, and because of this, some were actually for

Continued History of the First Audiologists in the Hearing Aid Industry A series of previous blogs featured stories from six of the first seven audiology-trained individuals employed by hearing aid manufacturers and how their backgrounds interacted with their employment positions.  This is information not published previously, but important and not to be lost for historical reasons in order to record

Send This Hearing Aid Fitting Request to Your Competitor   “Dr. Staab, when you get engineers as hearing aid customers, what’s the best way to handle them?  They often have a better understanding of electronics than I do, I often can’t answer questions they ask, or find at times that they tend to somewhat arrogant or all-knowing.” My response –

Development of Hearing Tests No specific event or development can be considered the origin of hearing tests as we identify them today.  Still, in the early 19th century, a couple of separate developments opened a pathway.  On one hand, there was a growing need for improved diagnoses and description of disease entities, and as a result, some simple, but practical

The Effect of Ambient Noise on the Speech Reproduction of Hearing Aids For the hearing impaired, ambient noise is a greater hindrance to the intelligibility of speech than for those of normal hearing.  Fortunately, contemporary hearing aids incorporate a number of designs and algorithms to reduce the disturbing effects of noise.  Still, in the fitting of hearing aids, the impact

Note:  This is a continuation of Adaptive Feedback from a previous blog on Adaptive Feedback V – Solution #9. Adaptive Feedback Cancellation History The literature is filled with varying approaches to adaptive feedback cancellation.  Any attempt to include all of the approaches will fall short, and this blog is no exception.  Still, some of the techniques and time-line are provided