Miller Reese Hutchison
Miller Reese Hutchison (August 6, 1876 – February 16, 1944) was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He developed some of the first portable electric devices, such as a vehicle horn and a hearing aid. His father was William Hutchison and mother born Tracie Elizabeth Magruder. He attended Marion Military Institute from 1889 through 1891, Spring Hill College 1891 through 1892, the University of Mobile Military Institute from 1892 through 1895, and graduated from Auburn University (then called Alabama Polytechnical Institute) in 1897. While still in school he invented and patented a lightning arrester for telegraph lines in 1895. At the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, he volunteered and was appointed engineer for the United States Lighthouse Board, laying cables and mines to protect harbors in the Gulf of Mexico. Hearing aids Hutchison assembled an electrical hearing aid for one of his friends; it was called the "akouphone" when it was first developed around 1895. Hutchison's interest in the invention stemmed from a childhood friend, Lyman Gould, who was deaf from scarlet fever. Besides his training in engineering, Hutchison had attended classes at the Medical College of Alabama to study the anatomy of the ear. He formed the