Sonotone 1010
The Sonotone 1010 hearing aid, introduced December 1952, was the was the first commercial product to use transistors, which had been invented five years earlier in 1947. [1]
It was a hybrid design, using two miniature vacuum tubes as input stages and a single transistor as the output stage; this was required because the transistors at the time produced too much electrical noise. Even using one transistor considerably extended battery life, lowering the operating cost of the unit. As transistors improved, this model was replaced by all-transistor hearing aids. [2]
The Sonotone company had its headquarters in New York and was established in 1929. [3] The company was bought by various other companies and was no longer in business by 2005.
References
- ^ Fildes, Jonathon (2005-11-15). "Switching on the digital world". BBC News. p. 1. Retrieved 2007-11-16.
- ^ http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Transistor%20(Body)/Sonotone/info/sonotone1010.htm Sonotone 1010 at the Hearing Aid Museum, retrieved 2009 Dec 30
- ^ http://www.roger-russell.com/sonopg/sonopg.htm The Sonotone Corporation, retrieved 2009 Dec 30