My Association with Edgar Villchur (aka the 10% Advice)

Edgar Villchur (1917-2011) was an American acoustics pioneer best known for his work on hi-fidelity loudspeakers and hearing-aids. His contribution to hi-fidelity loudspeakers is so important that his speakers have been placed on permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution since 1993. Without a relevant degree in the field of acoustics, as he told me, he managed to co-found an acoustics company after world war II, ran it for about 15 years, and sold his share for a huge profit. He then opened the Foundation for Hearing Aid Research, in Woodstock, and started working from a home laboratory to improve hearing aid technology. 

I first met Villchur in the spring of 1985. That time he was trying to recruit volunteers for his project in developing compression hearing aids. I was referred to him by my audiologist at Einstein for biweekly sessions. By the first few meetings, we became well acquainted such that before each session we used to talk about our families, backgrounds, his research in acoustics, Russian and Indian cultures and cuisine etc. Prior to 1985, he had done considerable research and published his work on two-channel hearing aid technology with several subjects and wanted to extend it beyond two channels. He wanted to extend that work to multi channels with me and four other subjects. The study lasted for about two years and he published the results in 1987. Later on researchers at Bell Labs extended his research.

Villchur, along with researchers at Bell Labs, is recognized as the inventor of compression hearing technology that forms the basis for all the hearing aids currently in use. Instead of linearly amplifying sound indiscriminately over the frequency spectrum (as the old fashioned hearing aids used to do), compression hearing aids pick up and process soft high-frequency sounds independent of louder low-frequency sounds. Rather than patenting his findings, Villchur decided to publish openly so any one can build on his findings. ReSound picked up his technology and released the first set of compression hearing aids in 1995. Although there have since been several improvements in compression technology,  Villchur's work remains seminal to the development of advanced hearing aids.

As for me, I greatly benefited by my association with Villchur. After every session, he would push his "10% advice". Since the time I started wearing my first hearing aid, I had been using just one - in my left ear, which I found highly superior than my right ear. Villchur would strongly argue and advice that I still have 10% residual hearing in my right ear and I would be better off with binaural aids. When ReSound's aids came out in 1995, as behind-the-ear (BTE) devices, he pressed me to go for two aids. Villchur turned out to be right, I went on improving my hearing in the right ear and kept it stimulated so when I went for a cochlear implant surgery in 2005, I gave the surgeons my right ear (less superior at that time) which is now my best ear (the Cochlear Implant journey is a story for another day).

Note added: The "10% advice" is the adage I apply to not just from Villchur alone but from Jag Gulati, one of my scientific mentors - hopefully I will get time to write on that someday.

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