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The establishment of a cochlear implant team and the implementation of the Oklahoma City project was for the purpose of monitoring techniques and results reported by other investigators as well as perhaps contributing to the improvement of this method of restoring sound to profoundly deafened individuals. Years of planning and 3 years of actual experience with over 25 patients who have been implanted will be documented. Technical advances in prosthetic attachments and new transformer circuitry as well as better methods of evaluating results will be presented. Our assessment of the value of the cochlear implant and its future will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nine post-lingually deafened adults received single-electrode cochlear implants and afterwards participated in a rehabilitation program. For these nine patients the average threshold sensitivity in soundfield was significantly better with use of the cochlear prosthesis than with hearing aid amplification in the same ear prior to implantation. Significant changes also occurred in discrimination of environmental sounds, recognition of words and stress patterns, and in speechreading skill. Certain aspects of phonation (harshness, control of intensity, and habitual pitch). and some articulation problems improved, while inflection abnormalities were not altered. Data concerning daily hours of implant activation, an indicator of patient acceptance, reveal that seven of the nine use their cochlear prosthesis for at least eight hours per day. These results suggest that the single electrode cochlear implant is a clinically useful tool in the rehabilitation of selected profoundly deaf individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 1933 Jay Catherwood Hormel proudly described his rule over the George A. Hormel & Company packinghouse in Austin, Minnesota, as a "benevolent dictatorship." Laborers for the Hormel Company agreed that Hormel's rule was dictatorial, but they disagreed with his use of the adjective "benevolent." In fact, the term "sheer tyranny" was more often used by workers to describe Hormel's labor relations policy within the giant meat packing plant. But in the eyes of local businessmen Hormel's benevolent dictatorship was both economically wise and just. Meat packing was the industry of Austin. In 1933 Hormel employed 2700 of the town's 17,000 residents. Four years later Fortune magazine observed that should Austin ever lose the Hormel payroll "the town would wither away to a few roadside stands and retail stores for farmers." The thought of Hormel moving even a part of his family enterprise from Austin haunted local businessmen. As a result, the town's business establishment provided a worshipful captive audience for Jay Hormel's pronouncements on labor relations. George Hormel attributed his success to a passion for perfection which inclined him toward the use of instructional maxims for his employees whenever he observed them wasting time or materials. Labor relations difficulties were not among George Hormel's management problems. A principal reason for this was Hormel's friendship and openness with many workers, who in turn did not hesitate to discuss their grievances and difficulties personally with him. He shared the humble origins of many of his laborers.