Hearing aid is an indispensable sense extension for a human being
. In early times, man has his way of hearing someone from a distance by cupping his hands right on his ear. As life was quite simple enough back then, hearing problems did not matter that much.
Some people were deaf by birth while others become one due to various conditions. No external noises at that time could trigger people to go deaf. Poor people normally dies of illness of old age while some rich class dies because of being murdered. Old age is also the likely cause of death among monks and scholars. It is interesting to note that trumpets were actually inspired by the "cupped hand" actions to capture sound.
Thus in those times, man essentially lived through hearing far sounds this way. Cupped hands and trumpets served as hearing aids for our forebears.It was not until 1900s when this way of hearing sound was changed with the invention of electricity and wirings.
Hearing aids today displays the same concept. The microphone captures and amplifies the sound and play it on to the loudspeaker installed inside the speaker. First generation hearing aids are not as compact as what we have today. The battery was the size of a house brick and so was the amplifier. Microphone and speakers were equally bigger in size too. The volume was also difficult to regulate.
Advance technology practically lead the way to create compact hearing aids. Some hearing aids can also be personalized to suit its consumer's needs. This is due to the fact that people have different degree of hearing problems.
Hearing aids available these days has to capacity to filter sounds even before it reaches the loudspeaker. Volume can also be regulated. Volume control can even be set to automatic.
Analog hearing aids essentially shares the same features as with early hearing aids except for its smaller size. This type of hearing aids are mounted behind the ear. Another type of hearing aid is the programmable analog type. This device is programmable for use in different predicaments and is a huge advance on the simple analogue process.
Finally, the latest type is modern digital hearing aid. This is a bit expensive but more effective. It can handle Digital Sound Processing. It features millions of sound codes to detect frequencies and filter them. It's very much like comparing blue ray discs over video tapes.