Silentside

An Italian physicist named Count Volta, was the very first to have the interest in stimulating hearing with electricity. Most physicists or doctors would never test out their new experiment or breakthroughs on themselves, but Volta did. Volta connected batteries to two metal rods and inserted it into his ears. When the circuit was completed, he received a ‘jolt in the head’ and ‘a kind of crackling, jerking or bubbling as if some dough or thick stuff was boiling’ as he described it in the 1800s. Count Volta found the feeling uncomfortable and didn’t repeat the experiment to often. Duchenne of Boulogne, a Frenchman, tried using an alternating current to stimulate his hearing. This occurred about 50 years after Volta. He thought it sounded like an insect trapped between a glass pane and a curtain.