Harry Levitt and hearing aids
Jont B. Allen · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2001
Levitt has always been interested in technology transfer. In 1980 he became a proponent of digital hearing aids and fitting systems. I first got to know Levitt during the 1983 AT&T venture into a multiband compression hearing aid, proposed to Waldhauer by Villchur, based in the ideas of Steinberg and Gardner (1938). One of the first things we did was to visit Levitt and pepper him with questions. He saw it as a huge opportunity, but it was difficult because he was consulting for Nicolet. Eventually AT&T decided to return to its ‘‘core’’ business, and the venture was sold to Resound Corp. At CUNY we also developed the loudness growth in 1/2 octave bands (LGOB) test, which was popular at one time. Soon after, Levitt convinced me to port our research distortion product analyzer, called CUBeDIS, to the PC platform. It was then further developed by Jeng (Levitt’s student), and is presently Starkey’s DPOAE/TOAE DP-2000 infant hearing screener. All this technology transfer would not have taken place if it were not for Harry Levitt—so for that we must graciously thank him.