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Why is a hearing aid speaker called a receiver?

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Why do audiologists and hearing aid manufacturers refer to the speaker in an aid as a “receiver”?

Surely “speaker” is the correct term?

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I guess it “receives” the signal from the aid??

One of those weird things about hearing aids. I also find it confusing that the convention is to put the results for the right ear on the left side of the page, or computer screen.

Kind of like in the UK, people got started driving on the wrong side of the road, instead of the RIGHT side, and just kept doing it! :slight_smile:

@brec said:

"Receiver” is a confusing term for those of us who first used it for a piece of audio entertainment equipment; originally it applied because the primary purpose of that piece was receiving FM radio. For HAs, it basically means “speaker,” or more generally, “receiver of the output of the amplifier.”

I wrote the preceding yesterday in another topic.

In reply to @Sierra

@Sierra said:

I also find it confusing that the convention is to put the results for the right ear on the left side of the page, or computer screen.

Don’t think of them as left and right; rather, as blue and red. :grinning:

Traditional mnemonic: R for Red and for Right. (But don’t use that for airplane wingtip navigation lights!)

It is confusing just like the English language when one word has different meanings. I think of receiver has an amplifier and other functions like tuner, radio, preamp, etc, in it.

It’s just derivative from the telephone industry where you lift the receiver and place it near you ear.

The way you describe a transducer is always contentious given that they are merely a method of transforming one energy to another.

Yes, I agree. The receiver on a telephone is were you receive the other party’s voice. The terminology predates modern electronics and our modern perspective.

Ah yes! The telephone. That explains an otherwise strange terminology. Telephones came first so audio terminology does not apply?

No, I’ve never understood why. Back in the days when I used body worn hearing aids, the “receivers” were in the white button like things on the ends of the cords and clipped on to my earmoulds via magnets.

It is wire-centric, not user-centric.

Alex Bell patented (specific aspects of) “sound on a wire”. The thing you put to your ear Receives the sound from the wire. The thing you talk to Transmits sound onto the wire (“transmitter”).

Bell was selling a way to put your voice blocks or miles away via a wire. The wire was central to the whole invention. (He didn’t patent the wire, or a good transmitter, but he sure commercialized The Bell System of wires and end-bits.)

For a century all telephony called the ear-thing a receiver.

Many early electric hearing aids WERE telephone parts. So the names carried-on.

The modern balanced-armature receiver is a very developed thing, but more closely related to classic telephone ear-things than any other common audio transducer.

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