The categorisation of hearing loss through telephony in inter-war Britain

McGuire, Coreen Anne

Abstract

The telephone in inter-war Britain was an important tool in both the identification and categorisation of individual hearing loss. Between 1912 and 1981, the British Post Office had control over a nationalised telephone system. Linkage between telephony and hearing has long been noted by historians of sound and science, and Post Office engineers in the inter-war period had considerable expertise in both telecommunications and hearing assistive devices. This article first demonstrates how the inter-war Post Office categorised different kinds of hearing loss through standardizing the capacity of its users to engage effectively with the telephone, and secondly investigates how successful it was in doing so. By utilising the substantial but little used material held by BT Archives, we can trace the development of the Post Office’s ‘telephone for deaf subscribers’ and explore how it was used to manage and standardise the variability of hearing and hearing loss within the telephone system.

Citation

McGuire, C. A. (2019). The categorisation of hearing loss through telephony in inter-war Britain. History and Technology, 35(2), 138-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2019.1652435

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Sep 3, 2019
• Publication Date: 2019
• Deposit Date: Sep 21, 2020
• Journal: History and Technology
• Print ISSN: 0734-1512
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-2620
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 138-155
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2019.1652435
• Related Public URLs: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/the-categorisation-of-hearing-loss-through-telephony-in-inter-war