Zenith Royal [Mod I] Vacuum Tube Hearing Aid

The Zenith Royal [Mod I] vacuum tube hearing aid was manufactured by the Hearing Aid Division of the Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago, IL beginning in October, 1952.

The Zenith Royal [Mod I] and the Zenith Super Royal [Mod I] were the last vacuum tube hearing aid models produced by Zenith. Four months later (February, 1953) Zenith produced their first transistorized hearing aid, the Royal T.

The Zenith Royal [Mod I] was identical to the Zenith Royal with two  exceptions. It had a t-coil and an external microphone jack, while the Royal didn't. You can see the t-coil below the "ZENITH" name on the lower front. The t-coil was called a "phone magnet" in those days.

Adding the t-coil necessitated two other changes in the switch placement (shown below). Apart from that, see the Zenith Royal on the previous page for the rest of the details of this hearing aid.

Here is a copy of the User's Manual for the Zenith Royal hearing aid.

In front of the receiver jack is a two-position A1-A2 switch. This interesting and rare switching arrangement was only used on the Zenith Royal and Super Royal models to switch between either of the two "A" batteries these hearing aids had.

The external microphone jack was so you could plug in an external microphone that you could wear on the outside of your clothing to avoid the sound of the microphone rubbing on your clothing.