Did you know that there are cell phones which only children can hear ringing? That’s right; it’s possible that there’s a phone ringing in the pocket of a kid next to you and they can hear it but you can’t. That’s because there are certain high frequency sounds that only kids can hear. Ringtones are being created that use these high frequency sounds. The result is that people under the age of 30 can typically hear the phone ringing but people who are older than 30 or who have experienced early hearing loss for some reason are not going to hear the phone ring at all.

An audiologist named Brandy Ness explained in a recent news article what is going on here. We all have hair cells in the ears which allow us to hear high-frequency cells. However the first stage of hearing loss is the loss of the ability to hear those sounds due to damage done to the cells as we age. By the time that we reach 30, we simply don’t hear those high frequency sounds that we used to hear when we were younger. Children who haven’t had their cells damaged yet are able to hear the sounds. The ringtones are created within the frequency that children can hear but adults can’t. You can imagine how unhappy school teachers are with this technological development as kids answer phones that the teacher didn’t hear ringing.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. If you take a look at the history of inventions, you will see that this is only partially true. There are many things that have been invented purely because the inventor was curious. However, there are also a lot of things that were invented out of the need for something new. The most common case in which we see this is that an industry will change or grow in some way and this growth will be quickly followed by a new invention that makes the industry’s work easier to do.

An example of this might be seen when you look at the history of body modification. There was a time when Western body modification was limited to tattoos and piercings. Today, we see that there are advanced piercings, branding and the implantation of various shaped materials under the skin. New tools had to be invented to perform these new procedures. People in this industry had a desire to see the industry change. In order to be able to make those changes, new technology had to be invented.

Body modification isn’t the only industry where this has occurred. People who work in dirt screening plants now use a gravel screening machine that didn’t exist before there was a need for it in the industry. People who work on assembly lines now have new tools available to them to make their jobs simpler. Wherever there is a changing industry, there is an invention waiting to happen.