A rare example of Rein’s “Invisible” Ear Phones.

Silver plated brass hearing aids whose stem sits in the external auditory canal. The receiving section fits snugly around the cartilage of the pinna, the outer surface of which is painted with flesh tones. Each piece is inscribed with his signature and address. Similar aids are documented in Historic Devices for Hearing, the CID-Goldstein collection from the 1914 Rein and also the 1883 Hawksley catalogue.  P.57 show a picture of a similar instrument described as “Politzer device to enlarge the tragus backwards”

In 1884 Adam Politzer developed a hearing aid in the form of a small tube, one end of which was fixed in the concha by a piece of rubber, the other went deep into the auditory canal conducting sound directly to the tympanic membrane. Politzer’s tube was the forerunner the intra-canal hearing aids. (Adam Politzer: A Life for Otology and Neurotology by A Mudry).

• From the Phisick collection