You must admit that some of today's technology advances are very useful. Take hearing aids, for instance. Today's micro-miniature hearing aids can hide inside the ear canal. A few sightly larger ones with more capabilities hide discreetly behind the ear. Hearing aids worn by our ancestors were not always so discreet.

The earliest known hearing aid, called an ear trumpet, was described by Belgian scientist and high school rector Jean Leurechon in his book Récréations-Mathématiues, in 1624. The book described how to make your own ear trumpet as there were no manufacturers of the device at that time.

In the late 1800s, Thomas Edison, who was hard of hearing, found that he could not use Alexander Graham Bell's new invention, called the telephone. The fact that he could not hear sounds from the telephone spurred his interest in improving it. This led to his 1878 invention of the carbon microphone for telephones, which, unlike Bell’s device, amplified the electrical signal.

In 1907, Lee De Forest of the Western Electric Company invented the first vacuum tubes, and the electronic amplification of sounds became possible. However, the company's first "hearing aid" in 1920 was anything but portable: it weighed 220 pounds and was the size of a filing cabinet. That hearing aid was best used when placed beside the user's living room easy chair; from his or her chair the user would hold a single earphone that looked like an old-fashioned telephone receiver. (Headphones were not invented until a few years later). For many wealthy deaf users, this was the first time in years they could participate in family conversations.

In 1938, the Aurex Corporation developed the first wearable hearing aid. A thin wire was connected to a small earpiece and then to an amplifier-receiver that clipped to the wearer’s clothes. The receiver was wired to a battery pack, which strapped to the leg.

By the early 1950s, hearing aids had been "miniaturized" to fit into a man's shirt pocket. I well remember my uncle wearing one of these. It contained miniature vacuum tubes, and it consumed expensive batteries quickly. My uncle reported that he was frequently bothered by the rustling sound of his clothing as amplified by the hearing aid. Then he would smile and also comment that the hearing aid also was a great excuse for not listening to his wife. "I don't know, Honey, I think the battery died."

By 1957, hearing aids were small enough to fit into eyeglass frames. Lee De Forest himself, by then 84 years old and hard of hearing, appeared in ads in 1957 endorsing the product, saying, “It overcomes all of the objections I previously had to wearing a hearing aid.”

Of course, miniaturization continued. Even better, digital processing of the audio appeared by the late 1980s, and the problems of background noise were reduced. Today people suffering from hearing loss have many tiny solutions to choose from. If only Grandpa had one of these available when he needed it.

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

The International Headstone Collection at TheGenealogist has been boosted with 100,000 new records, bringing the total to nearly 400,000 records in the collection available for all Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist to search.

Included are some extremely interesting memorials that allow researchers to see details about ancestors that have been immortalised on gravestones. These inscriptions can provide the family historian with useful information about the deceased and their family as commemorated in various churches and cemeteries.

The headstone records released cover various burial places and include, at Mells St Andrew, Somerset - Siegfried Sasson, Ronald Arbuthnot Knox, a translator of the Bible and some members of the Bonham Carter family and the Asquith family.

In St Peter’s Churchyard, Bournemouth, is the grave of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. She was the widow of the Romantic Poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was cremated in Italy – though some of his mortal remains are reputedly also interred in this grave having been buried along with their son Sir Percy Florence Shelley.

[Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein grave at St Peter’s Bournemouth]

The Headstones Collection is also a record layer on TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™ with its ability to look into the area surrounding the location of the churchyard or cemetery. With its different historical and modern georeferenced maps, the researcher can discover the area and see the neighbourhood’s streets where the deceased ancestor may have lived, worked and played.

The International Headstone Collection is an ongoing project where every stone photographed or transcribed earns volunteers credits, which they can spend on subscriptions at TheGenealogist.co.uk or products from GenealogySupplies.com. If you would like to join, you can find out more about the scheme at: https://ukindexer.co.uk/headstone/

Read TheGenealogist’s article: The horror author with the heart of a poet

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/the-horror-author-with-the-heart-of-a-poet-1610/

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections.

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

Why doesn't this ever happen to me? Yes, I suspect every genealogist is asking himself or herself the same question.

An article in Newsweek states:

A New York influencer who finds lost heirlooms at flea markets has uncovered a beautiful diary dating back to 1901 that is full of romantic love poems.

Chelsey Brown, from New York, is a 29-year-old interior decorator who researches genealogy as a hobby, finding lost heirlooms at flea markets and antique shops and then returning them to their families. The New Yorker uploads videos revealing the histories behind the objects to her TikTok account and has almost 190,000 followers.

Brown told Zenger News in an exclusive interview that she found the diary kept by a woman who wrote beautiful poems to the love of her life.

She added: "The diary contains entries, poems, letters mostly about the boy she was in love with in 1901. It also includes newspaper clippings and information about friends and family. There are also a few letters tucked inside from the 1940s. She was a student and he went off to Washington State (cross country) in 1901 to teach for seven years."

Brown said: "As for their life, they had 6 children over 13 years. Throughout their time apart, they would send each other letters. Sadly, one of their sons died at a young age, 47, and it's so hard to watch a child die knowing you are supposed to be before them."

She added: "MyHeritage allows me to find census records, newspaper articles, marriage records, public family trees, war records, and more. Using this information, I can easily piece together the timeline of this couple's life."

You can read more at: https://www.newsweek.com/beautiful-1901-diary-full-love-poems-unearthed-flea-market-1736971.

OK, this may be the world's biggest family tree but it doesn't meet the standards of modern genealogy. For one thing, most of the individuals are unnamed. Nonetheless, it is an amazing accomplishment and undoubtedly will be a major asset for scientists everywhere.

From an article in the StudyFinds web site at: https://studyfinds.org/worlds-biggest-family-tree/:

The world’s biggest family tree linking around 27 million people has been created by scientists. The genetic model combines thousands of modern and prehistoric genomes, providing new insight into key events in human history.

The breakthrough is a major step towards mapping the entirety of human relationships, with a single lineage that traces the ancestry of all people on Earth. The family tree also has widespread implications for medical research, identifying genetic predictors of disease.

“We have basically built a huge family tree, a genealogy for all of humanity that models as exactly as we can the history that generated all the genetic variation we find in humans today. This genealogy allows us to see how every person’s genetic sequence relates to every other, along all the points of the genome,” says principal author Dr. Yan Wong in a university release.

The University of Oxford team combed through eight databases containing 3,609 different genome sequences from 215 populations. They included samples from across the world; some being over 100,000 years-old. The resulting network contained almost 27 million ancestors and 231 million ancestral lineages.

You can read more at: https://studyfinds.org/worlds-biggest-family-tree/.

You can also watch a YouTube video about this project at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVWAZ4TdIZs.

In less than two years, Chester County’s most historic documents will be available online.

Thanks to improved scanning equipment, Chester County’s Archives & Records Services has accelerated the process of scanning and digitizing documents dating back to 1681. The goal: To make the collection publicly available on the county’s website so that people can easily acquire historic information.

The county installed a new scanner in January 2020 right before COVID hit, making this project possible. The department had been working with a less sophisticated scanner since 2007. To date, about 40 percent of the Archives’ collection has been digitized.

“Our goal is to have everything that is considered a historic, permanent record digitized,” said Chester County Commissioners’ Chairwoman Marian Moskowitz. “Some of the conversions are from microfilm to digital, while others are from the physical documents themselves to digital. The process of scanning originals is slow because they must be handled so delicately, and we are talking about 340 years of history here.”

You can read more in an article in the Daily Local News web site at: https://bit.ly/3QRltcE.

President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935. It was a major part of his New Deal plans, most of which were strongly opposed by the Republican Party. Three and a half months later, on December 1, 1936, the first block of 1,000 records were assembled and were ready to start their way through the nine-step process that would result in the creation of a permanent master record and the establishment of an earnings record for the individual.

When this first stack was ready, Joe Fay, head of the Division of Accounting Operations in the Candler Building, walked over to the stack, pulled off the top record, and declared it to be the official first Social Security record. This particular record, (055-09-0001) belonged to John D. Sweeney, Jr., age 23, of New Rochelle, New York. The next day, newspapers around the country announced that Sweeney had been issued the first Social Security Number.

Mr. Sweeney was the son of a wealthy factory owner. The younger Mr. Sweeney had grown up in a 15-room Westchester County home staffed with servants. In an effort to learn the family business, Mr. Sweeney was working as a shipping clerk for his father at the time he filled out his application for a Social Security card. The whole Sweeney family voted for Republican Presidential candidate Landon in 1936, although John Jr. allowed that he liked the new Social Security program, even though he didn't think much of the New Deal.

Ironically, John Sweeney died of a heart attack in 1974 at the age of 61 without ever receiving any benefits from the Social Security program. However, his widow was able to receive benefits, based on his work, until her death in 1982.

Here is a web site you probably should bookmark: https://cloudconvert.com. You probably won't need to use it often but when you do have a need, it can be a lifesaver. Best of all, it is a free service if you only want to convert a few files. However, if you want to convert dozens of files, there is a modest charge.

CloudConvert converts almost any file from one format to almost any other format. It recognizes files in more than 200 different formats. I find it useful for converting PNG images into JPG format. It also can can turn a PDF file into a DOCX file, which you may open in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, or Google Docs. It also can convert Macintosh Keynote presentation files into PowerPoint PPTX files. In fact, CloudConvert can convert about 200 different file formats into other file formats. It can also convert an entire web page into PDF, JPG, or PNG formats.

I find that CloudConvert does an excellent job of converting PDF files into editable .DOC or .DOCX files as its translation seems to be very accurate.

CloudConvert also allows you to extract audio from a video file. For example, I selected a .MOV file and converted it to .MP3 format. That gave me an audio-only .MP3 file. It also converts .MOV video files into .MP4 video files as well.

Did you download a video from the web, only to find it doesn't display in your computer's video player? CloudConvert probably can fix the problem for you.

CloudConvert will also convert files into more efficient versions of file formats. For instance, you can use the service to convert .JPG files (also known as .JPEG) into more compressed .JPG files. The result is reduced image size without losing the image quality. It is widely used in web publishing to reduce the image size maintaining the image quality.

CloudConvert is a cloud-based application. That is, the program runs from a web site. There is no software to install in your computer. It works equally well on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Chromebooks, and even on mobile devices running Android or Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch).

For occasional use, CloudConvert doesn't charge. If you convert files smaller than 1 gigabyte and use less than 25 file conversions a day, CloudConvert's services are free of charge. For high volume users, CloudConvert does charge fees as described at https://cloudconvert.com/pricing. I suspect most in-home users will never encounter a need for fees.

CloudConvert is one of those useful web tools that you may not need immediately. But, the next time you say, "I can't open this file...," give it a try. CloudConvert may be able to convert that file you can't use into one you can.

CloudConvert is available at https://cloudconvert.com.

The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) presented its 2022 awards and grants at its virtual 42nd International Conference on Jewish Genealogy Aug. 21-25. The conference had more than 800 attendees from 17 countries and 39 states in the United States.

Recipients are:

Lifetime Achievement Award: Harry Boonin, Philadelphia

Nolan Altman Volunteer of the Year: David Rosen, Boston

Outstanding Resource: Jean-Pierre Stroweis, Jerusalem

Outstanding Publication: San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society and the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois

Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant: The Forward

John Stedman Memorial Grant: Stadtmuseum Hofgeismar, Germany – Jewish Department

IAJGS is an umbrella organization of more than 90 Jewish genealogical organizations worldwide. IAJGS coordinates and organizes activities such as its annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy and provides a unified voice as the spokesperson on behalf of its members. The IAJGS’s vision is of a worldwide network of Jewish genealogical research organizations and partners working together as one coherent, effective and respected community, enabling people to succeed in researching Jewish ancestry and heritage. Find the IAJGS at: www.iajgs.org and like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/iajgsjewishgenealogy.

Background information on winners:

Lifetime Achievement Award – Harry Boonin

Harry was recognized for his pioneering role and over four decades of leadership, scholarship and mentorship in Jewish Genealogy. In 1979 Harry founded what is today known as the Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia. IAJGS honored him for his trailblazing, steadfast and exemplary service to the international Jewish genealogy community.

A self-taught historian, Harry has authored a prolific body of scholarship in Jewish genealogy and history, including four books and 250 journal articles. Among the writing was his first book “The Jewish Quarter of Philadelphia.” For 15 years, he led Jewish Walking tours in the area of Philadelphia identified as -for about 120 years ago – the “Jewish Quarter,” which today still has original buildings from that bygone era. In 1995 he released a book he co-authored about his family: “The Davidows: The Experiences of an Immigrant Family.” He celebrated at Ellis Island with 75 descendants celebrating the 90^th anniversary of his grandfather’s arrival at Ellis Island with his wife and 7 children.

Nolan Altman Volunteer of the Year – David Rosen,

David was recognized for his outstanding support of Jewish genealogy. For more than 10 years, David has been an important contributor to the JGS of Greater Boston’s Memorial Plaques Project. Additionally, David’s’ great contribution to the Jewish genealogy community of the Boston area and beyond are the mountains of records he has transcribed and indexed himself without fanfare. He organizes the plaque photos, does the Hebrew-to- English translations and enters the data into the database template, having submitted 82,500 plaque transcriptions from 137 institutions. His award states, “His efforts exemplify volunteerism at its finest.”

Outstanding Resource - Jean-Pierre Stroweis

Jean-Pierre was recognized for the Online Memorial to the Jews deported from France, a free bilingual database of 80,000 Holocaust victims who were deported from France or murdered there. For the past 7 years, he has been working tirelessly to not only convert Serge Klarsfeld’s Memorial books into a searchable tool, but also to correct errors and add missing details based on his own research. His database links each victim’s name to other websites containing additional information pertaining to that individual, making it easier for researchers to find a victim in a range of sources via a single search. Search the Memorial at: https://stevemorse.org/france.

Outstanding Publication – Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois

The Illinois Society was recognized for its outstanding efforts to encourage engagement in research and educate its members in Morasha. Its 3-times yearly publication. Edited by Dale Amdur from Chicago, this newsletter features historical, anecdotal and research related articles written by JGSI members and concise recaps of the Society’s monthly meetings and conference participation.

Outstanding Publication – San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

The Society was recognized for its outstanding efforts to inspire active participation among its members and excitement about Jewish genealogy in the wider community. The award recognizes the quarterly publication, ZichronNote. Edited by Janice M. Sellers of Gresham, Oregon, formerly of Oakland, CA, this journal features articles based on original research and timely commentaries written by members as well as a curated calendar of upcoming genealogy events.

Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant – The Forward

The Forward will partner with JewishGen to create a searchable database of genealogical records found in the Forward’s “Seeking Relatives” advertisements during the period of 1920-1960. The goal is to extract the names of 500 individuals mentioned in “Seeking Relatives” ads, along with the sparse but valuable data accompanying their names. This information will be published in a free, searchable database on JewishGen.org. This project will be of particular interest to Holocaust survivors and their descendants; and scholars of 20th-century Jewish history/Holocaust history. Conducting research using the National Library of Israel’s digitized back issues is difficult, time-consuming and frustrating for non-Yiddish speakers. Creating this type of database will offer much needed guidance and ease of research. The Forward’s archivist Chana Pollack will lead the project.

John Stedman Memorial Grant : Stadtmuseum Hofgeismar, Germany – Jewish Department

The Stadtmuseum Hofgeismar is represented by Julia Drinnenberg, educational leader of the Jewish department. This “make old tombstones talk again” project will focus on nine large and small cemeteries in the Kassel district in Germany that have not been explored. The work will include measuring the terrain to create a site plan with the existing graves; translating their inscriptions for a visitor's handbook in German and English; making the translations available on the museum’s website and the database www.lagis-hessen.de/en; and adding inscriptions of tombstones that were destroyed after 1937. The tombstones will be cleaned and some re-photographed. The Hebrew and German inscriptions will be copied and translated by a recruited specialist. The data on the deceased will be compared with the existing registers of deaths.

This undertaking is planned as an educational project for high school students under the guidance of Julia Drinnenberg, introducing them to topics of Jews and Judaism.

The following announcement was written by West Virginia University:

The National Endowment for the Humanities is awarding the West Virginia University Libraries' West Virginia and Regional History Center a grant —  its sixth from the NEH, this one totaling $162,155 — allowing it to continue its important work of digitizing newspapers published in West Virginia from 1791 to 1927.

The award is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a collaboration between the NEH and the Library of Congress to enlist libraries and institutions around the country to create a digital database of historical United States newspapers.

This grant brings the NEH’s total funding of the WVRHC’s efforts to more than $1.29 million.

"We are honored that the NEH continues to support our efforts to enhance access to the historical newspapers preserved in the WVRHC," said Lori Hostuttler, WVRHC interim director. “It’s a testament to the incalculable value of these resources and the influential role West Virginia has played in our nation’s history.”

The Chronicling America website provides access to more than 15 million newspaper pages from 1690 to 1963. So far, the WVRHC has contributed 500,000 pages from more than 105 historic West Virginia newspapers. Because of this grant, another 100,000 pages will soon be added to the site.

WVRHC curator Stewart Plein said this round of newspapers will focus on the timber industry and its three major impacts within the state: its exponential growth, the effects of deforestation, and the rise of conservation and reforestation.

Newspapers selected for this grant cycle will cover six counties —  Greenbrier, Nicholas, Pocahontas, Randolph, Tucker and Webster — all in the mountainous region of the state.

“The story of the timber industry in West Virginia is as much a boom and bust cycle as that of the lumber towns that rose and fell in the path of clearcutting and deforestation.  The unprecedented growth in lumbering operations not only changed the face of West Virginia, but as the only state entirely within the borders of Appalachia, the impact on forestry and timbering was felt across the region,” Plein said.

Newspapers have been essential to documenting the timber industry because most companies destroyed their records as they left the state.

“West Virginia’s historic newspapers will reveal every pro-development argument, every move a company made after stands were clear cut, every accident, the travails of immigrants, the aftereffects of deforestation, and the rise of conservation in a state that has played a major role in the timber industry, in West Virginia, Appalachia and across the nation,” Plein said.

Stephen Kidd, National Humanities Alliance executive director, lauded the NEH for awarding $31.5 million in grants to support 226 humanities projects nationwide.

“The National Digital Newspaper Program grants will aid in the continued preservation of our nation’s history and culture through the digitization of local newspapers, including those that covered underrepresented histories,” Kidd said. “We are immensely proud of the NEH’s impact across the U.S. and will continue advocating for increased federal support for future grants in 2022 and beyond.”

Previously, the NEH funded WVU projects that focused on the Mine Wars, African American newspapers, the Civil War with reporting from both sides of the conflict, struggles between eastern and western Virginia, West Virginia’s statehood movement and establishment, West Virginia’s 1872 Constitution, reconstruction and the U.S. centennial.

It appears there's more to a doppelgänger than meets the eye.

DNA analyses of 16 look-alike couples have revealed some unrelated people with super similar faces also have similar heights, weights, habits, and behaviors.

Human resemblance, it would seem, is more than just skin deep.

In the study, 3 different facial recognition algorithms were tasked with scoring the likeness of 32 look-alikes pairs; half were classified as doppelgängers by all 3 algorithms. Researchers then conducted genetic analyses and found 9 pairs of "ultra" look-alikes.

Together, these super doppelgängers share 19,277 common genetic variations in 3,730 genes, many of which are to do with body and facial traits.

Their personal questionnaires suggest they share even more than that.

Some lifestyle features, like smoking habits, weight, and level of education, were also associated with many look-alike pairs.

You can read more in an article by Carly Cassella published in the ScienceAlert.com web site at: https://bit.ly/3dTcKbc.