Acousticon Carbon Church Aid (Wood Case)

The Acousticon Carbon Church Aid was manufactured from around 1908 and up through the 1918 by the General Acoustic Company, which was reorganized in1918 and became Dictograph Products, Inc. of New York, NY. The earlier versions were finished in attractive wooden boxes like this model from around 1910 or so.

In 1927, a complete 6-person system cost the grand total of $220.00!
 

Constructed of beautiful solid oak, the case measured 16" by 4½" and was 2" deep. The unit weighed 2 pounds.

This carbon microphone box was either placed on the pulpit, or inset into the face of the pulpit.

Four "Gray Label" 1½ volt dry cells powered this "hearing aid".

There are identical pin sockets on each end of the box. One set was for the wires going to the various volume controls/earphone jacks and the other set was for connecting the batteries to the microphone box.

These pin sockets consist of one large and one small socket each—and probably were used interchangeably because of the very nature of carbon hearing devices since the batteries, earphones and microphones are all hooked in series with each other.
 

This church "hearing aid" must have been one of the earlier ones as its serial number is only 15,592.

To hear with this system, a hard of hearing person picked up the earphone lorgnette, extended the handle to a comfortable length and held it up to one ear. The handle extended from 4" to 9¼".

The ear phone plugged into a volume control (bottom left) on the back of the pew in front of you.

Close up of the carbon earphone with the handle collapsed. The earphone was 2" in diameter.

Close up of the back of the carbon earphone.

Note that the pins were of different sizes to prevent plugging them in the wrong holes, thus preserving the correct polarity.

The earphone pins plugged into the two holes (top left and right).

 This was a five position volume control shown in the medium position. Louder was the two positions to the left and softer was the two positions to the right.

Four to six of these volume control units were typically connected to the microphone. The maximum the system could handle was 8 receivers.

Picture taken from an Acousticon instruction manual showing a similar Acousticon Carbon Church Aid and all its parts.

Note the battery case (top center) containing 4 standard "Gray Label" dry cells. A set of batteries was supposed to last from 6 to 12 months of use.

Also, notice the coil of wire (upper right) that connected the microphone box on the pulpit to the volume controls on the backs of the pews—usually in the first or second row of pews.

Click here to read this 24 page interesting booklet entitled "For the Love of Mankind".

This is the top view of the pulpit of the Gettysburg Christ Lutheran Church in downtown Gettysburg, PA as it still looks today.

It is interesting that this carbon aid was chosen rather than one of the new-fangled vacuum tube hearing aids that had been out for about 5 years at the time when this Acousticon church aid was purchased.

The church council minutes of May 5, 1926 read: "The Acousticon committee recommended that the earphone system of the Dictograph Products Corporation be purchased, the cost approximately $185.00. The recommendation was adopted and the same committee authorized to install the system."

The minutes of June 25, 1926 report: "The Acousticon was reported installed."

This church, built in 1835-1836, was used as a Union hospital during the Civil War battle at Gettysburg that took place on July 1 to 3, 1863.

This church was pressed into service as a hospital from July 1 to August 15, 1863. It accommodated as many as 150 injured soldiers at a time.
 

You can learn more about this church and its fascinating history at http://www.christgettysburg.net.

The pulpit with the Acousticon carbon church aid installed is at the front just a bit left of center.

Note, carbon microphones would not work if mounted flat (horizontal) as the carbon "shot" had to make contact with the diaphragm at the front of the microphone in order to complete the circuit.

Fortunately, this pulpit has just enough slope so that some carbon "shot" touched the diaphragm, although sometimes apparently it didn't work that well. When it stopped working, one lady parishioner used to pound her lorgnette earpiece on the back of the pew in front of her to let the pastor know! It probably would have worked better if it had been mounted vertically on the pulpit.

The slot at the top center was for the lever on-off switch. This switch was removed when the unit was no longer being used so it wouldn't catch on papers on the pulpit.

This Acousticon Carbon Church Aid must have been quite popular since at least 153,000 had been sold by 1926 when this one was sold.

I'll bet this is one of very few, if not the only one, still installed in its original pulpit—and which pulpit is still being used every Sunday.

Notice that in the picture of the "hole" in the pulpit (7 pictures above) they had gouged out channels so these jacks did not have to be removed, but later they found they couldn't get "in there" to plug in the wires. Thus they resorted to moving the jacks to the bottom of the box so they could plug the wires in, then install the box in the pulpit.
 

Bottom view of the Acousticon Carbon Church Aid box of the Gettysburg Christ Lutheran Church showing how the 4 microphones were mounted in this box and how the microphones and switch and jack were wired together.