reading about the history of the cochlear implant and i just found these incredible descriptions of ways that deaf people in the 1800s made assistive/alert devices for themselves.
first, an alternative to the doorbell:
We cut the bell away, attached a spring to the wire and to this another piece of wire, which had a block of wood fastened to one end and the whole was so contrived that the least pull of the bell handle at the door woudl send the block of wood with a dull, heavy, thud, to the floor of the room and the ... vibration it caused never failed to attract our attention.
but the one that brought tears of laughter to my eyes was this alternative to an alarm clock:
We had one [alarm for waking deaf sleepers] in our house ... for a long time and it always worked perfectly. The simplest is a cord attached to teh alarm wheel of a clock, passing from the drum to a point in the cieling over the head of the bed, where a small spring or trap is fixed with a little wire, upon which a pillow or cushion can be hung. The alarm being set at the desired hour, when it strikes, the drum winds up the cord and the pillow ... drops upon the sleeper, who is aroused thereby.
deaf people (and other disabled people more broadly) have never been this miserable, helpless and inherently downtrodden group that hearing/abled society imagines. except when it comes to waking up on winter mornings. everyone, hearing or deaf, is miserable about this.
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