| What HERTZ Your Ears?
By Linda L. Zimmerman
Most humans communicate in a frequency range up to 8 kilo hertz (kHz) and can hear at much higher levels. A piano’s highest note is about 4 kHz. Some people can hear frequencies as high as 22 kHz. “Presbycusis” occurs, however, as you age and is the normal loss of acute hearing.
It is very common for younger humans to use their cell phone ringtones and this physical difference knowledge to deceive older humans. “Mosquito” ringtones can be heard mainly by people under the age of 30, but some higher frequencies can be heard only by those under age 25. In general, those over 60 can usually only hear a frequency of 10 kHz or less, and if you are over 30 you likely can’t hear a frequency over 15 kHz. These high-pitched tones sound a little like a buzzing mosquito--if you can hear them.
Can you imagine a 23-year old golfer at an outing with Tiger Woods? A young fan could set off an annoying high-pitched ringtone that causes the young golfer to miss a putt while Tiger, now over 30 years of age, wouldn’t hear a thing. That could happen in all sorts of other sporting events as well.
This technology is widely used by students in areas where cell phones must be turned off. They text each other with the higher ringtones which the teachers can’t hear, making “sharing correct answers” easy and virtually unnoticed by the instructors. The higher frequencies can also be heard from greater distances by those under 25. A teacher might hear the sound close up but not from the other side of a room.
A technology teacher at a high school in Manhattan, NY, heard about this technology from a student. The teacher couldn’t hear it, nor could a fellow teacher. She was surprised when she played the inaudible tone to a group of first graders who all heard it.
Even in Wales, a teacher heard her students laughing. They all heard somebody’s cell phone ring in the “no cell phones on” class, but the teacher didn’t hear a thing. She commented that it did show that the students were resourceful, so she couldn’t be too upset.
In one instance at a high school on Long Island, NY, an annoying high-pitched ringtone went off. The teacher surprised the students by asking who had the cell phone and to turn it off. While the teacher was 28 years old, her hearing was much more sensitive than other 25 year olds.
The history behind the popularity of these high-pitched sounds actually originated in Great Britain in 2005. A Welsh inventor and Nobel Prize Winner for Peace, Howard Stapleton, created the use of these sounds for Compound Security (www.compoundsecurity.co.uk/), a British security company, to deter young children from hanging around businesses. The sound was aptly named for the insect by Stapleton because it was “small and annoying.”
It was first used at a convenience store in South Wales. It worked so well as an “ultrasonic teenager repellant” to annoy the young people that it was described as “an important step forward in crime prevention,” according to Wikipedia on-line. Teenagers, however, turned the tables on adults using this same technology.
Stapleton came up with the idea from a childhood memory. When he was 12 years old, he and his Father visited a factory and opened a room where workers were using high-frequency welding equipment. When Stapleton complained to his Father about the awful noise, neither his Father nor the other adults could hear the noise.
Since the Mosquito Ringtone (TeenBuzz Ringtone, talbots ringtone, Zimbutone) was actually pirated from Compound Security, Stapleton decided to start up a ringtone called the “Mosquitotone, the authentic Mosquito ringtone” according to Simon Morris, Stapleton’s partner and Compound Security Marketing Director.
One website, www.freemosquitoringtones.org, actually lists the kHz ranges with the age ranges to assist the downloader in the selection process. Other sites for free high-frequency ringtones include www.jetcityorange.com/mosquito-ringtone/, www.mozzytones.com and new in 2007 www.tonetunes4u.com/.
Information for this article was gathered from the above websites; THE NEW TORK TIMES June, 2006 issue; THE NEW YORK TIMES Barry Wales Journal article “What’s The Buzz?” by Sarah Lyall, November 29, 2005; NEW YORK TIMES article “A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears” by Kate Hammer and Nate Schweber contributors, June 12, 2006.
Linda has a broad-based business background with over twenty years of marketing and sales experience with multi-billion dollar corporations. She holds an MBA from DePaul University.
RMS
Communications Group, Inc.
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