Card of the Day - 2022-03-03

This seems to be the only card ever issued that shows a Hearing Aid, though the text tells us that this device was a development of the long known fact that sound can be heard better by cupping a hand to an ear. That led to using animal horns to magnify the sound, and, luckily for the animals, to a better way, manufactured by man, and called the ear trumpet, a device that looked rather like a gramophone horn.

The card tells us that there was “no electronic device of any use appeared until the Marconi Company produced the valve operated Otophone in 1923”. This was bulky and weighty, at 16lb.  The important word there is "electronic", for hearing aids had been around for almost a hundred years, and a spot of research finds that the otaphone, sometimes spelled otophone, was already a word in use to describe a hearing aid, the first ever to be patented, in March 1836, to an ear specialist Alphonso William Webster.

You can see this, and read more, at a fascinating site called Nineteenth-Century Disability

The link at the bottom of that page takes you to another site at the Washington University School of Medicine which shows other concealed hearing devices. It is well worth the trip, and more time can be spent using the links on the left hand side-tab

As for our card, it comes from a very interesting set that traces the story of invention from the wheel up to a glimpse into the future, with a miniature television, shaving cream that dissolves whiskers, and spaceships that travel faster than the speed of light.

They claimed that these would be reality in a century`s time (by 2075), but the first of these was already a reality - for in 1970 Panasonic had started to retail a pocket sized television, and Sinclair soon brought out a rival. Whilst the shaving cream that dissolves whiskers simply sounds like the sort of waxes that ladies have used for many centuries, right back to the time of Ancient Egypt. However travelling at the speed of light (299,792,458 metres per second) has not yet been attained, and probably never will be - though we must remember that until 1947 it was thought impossible to break the sound barrier.

Note that we only have one reference code, because as this set is post 1970, it does not appear in our updated British Trade Index. The code we use comes from our vintage volume, RB31, the British Trade Index Part III, which was published in 1986. The text is also a bit sparse, for even the measurements appear in the header (68 x 37), it just reads : 

INVENTORS AND INVENTIONS. Nd. (50). Issued 1975 ... BRM-51

There was a special album, which cost 8d. and a wallchart. Do note that there are two different versions of the order form. The original was stapled in to the album as the centre spread, but there is a second which was obtained from Brooke Bond, maybe even returned with your order of missing odds. Both, confusingly, are printed in red - so the best way to tell them apart is by the staple marks at the fold, because the second version was never inserted into an album. And often, but not always, the second version has a number on the back so that Brooke Bond could tell if you ordered more odds or sets at a later date.