Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality

Viktoria Tkaczyk, Mara Mills, and Alexandra Hui: Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online August 2020, print October 2020).

 

Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality shows how new forms of testing contributed not only to new understandings of hearing but to completely new ways of hearing. From diagnostic surveys of school children, to training regimes for sonar operators, to a community’s use of noise complaints to test their state’s power, this volume showcases twelve historical case studies spanning 200 years. The history of testing hearing—and using hearing to test other objects and ideas—prompts us to think more broadly about the role of testing, with its evolving values and applications, in the very way we sense and perceive and move through the world.


Oxford University Press Scolarship
Oxford University Press

Find archival materials related to some of the papers here:

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“Telephone Clarity Test Questions List”. n.d.
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““Acoustically Complete” Sentences For Telephone Testing”. n.d.
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“Consonants And Vowels For Random Cvc Selection”. n.d.
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“Articulation Test Record”. n.d.
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“Harvard Psycho-Acoustic Lab Word List”. n.d.
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“We 4-Type Audiometer Hearing Test Chart”. n.d.
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1820. “On Sounds Inaudible By Certain Ears”. Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society Of London: 306-314. https://archive.org/details/philtrans05025818/page/n7/mode/2up.
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Rinne, Adolf. 1855. “Beiträge Zur Physiologie Des Menschlichen Ohres”. Vierteljahrschrift Für Praktische Heilkunde: no. 45: 71–123; no. 46: 45–72. https://archive.org/details/vierteljahrschr17unkngoog/page/n4/mode/2up/search/rinne.
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Wolf, Oskar. 1871. Sprache Und Ohr: Akustisch-Physiologische Und Pathologische Studien. Braunschweig: Friedrich Viehweg und Sohn. https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11002822_00005.html.
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Cardamo, Girolamo. 1554. “De Subtilitate, Libri Xiii”. In Hieronymi Cardani Mediolanensis Medici De Subtilitate Libri Xxi, 273–289. Nürnberg. https://archive.org/details/hin-wel-all-00000138-001/page/n316/mode/2up.