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Experiencing ear trumpets in the Enlightenment

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Past
  • Free
  • Discussion
  • British Sign Language (online)
  • Auto-captioned
Photo of a laptop with a video chat image of a man in a blue blazer. On the table are a jug with foliage, a candle and a watermelon on a chopping board
Exploring Research with Dr Ruben Verwaal, Photo: Kathleen Arundell. Portrait: Steven Pocock. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

What you’ll do

Watch a recording with Dr Ruben Verwaal to explore the oldest acoustic hearing aids in Wellcome Collection: the ear trumpet. 

You will learn about how ear trumpets were developed at the turn of the 18th century and why this large acoustic device became increasingly commonplace among the hard of hearing.

Joshua Reynolds, Elizabeth Vesey and James Hutton are some of the best-known ear-trumpet users in Georgian high society. This presentation will investigate the experiences of the hard of hearing as well as the perceptions of their interlocutors at art academies, science societies and church congregations, and show how these social contexts accepted the new technology as a means of increased participation.

Dates

,
Past

Need to know

Guaranteed

Booking a ticket guarantees you entry to the online event. You will be given joining instructions in your confirmation email.

British Sign Language (online)

This event is British Sign Language interpreted. An interpreter will be embedded in the event livestream or visible on screen for online viewers.

Auto-captioned

There will be auto-generated captions for this event.

For more information, please visit our Accessibility page. If you have any queries about accessibility, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 0 2 0. 7 6 1 1. 2 2 2 2

Our event terms and conditions

About your speaker

Dr Ruben Verwaal

Ruben Verwaal has a PhD in History of Medicine from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is currently researching medical perceptions and personal experiences of deafness and hardness of hearing in early modern Europe at the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham.