Hearing Aid, Acousticon Type 8394

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.”

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.

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.”

Ref: Howell W. Haff, “Telephone-Transmitter, U.S. Patent 874,004 (Oct. 28, 1902), assigned to General Acoustic Company.

“Miller Hutchinson, Inventor, 67, Dead,” New York Times (Feb. 18, 1944), p. 17.

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