Adam Kissiah, an engineer at Kennedy Space Center who was hearing impaired and unsatified with available hearing aids, used his NASA-honed expertise from work in the Space Shuttle Program, which included electronic, sound and vibration sensor systems, to develop an implant that worked by electric impulses rather than sound amplification.
One of the pioneers in early cochlear implant technology was Adam Kissiah, an engineer at Kennedy Space Center who was hearing impaired and unsatisfied with available hearing aids. Kissiah used his NASA-honed expertise from work in the Space Shuttle Program, which included electronic, sound and vibration sensor systems, to develop an implant that worked by electric impulses rather than sound amplification.
Read more: http://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff2003/hm_3.html
Image credit: Yahoo! Accessibility Lab, CC BY-SA 2.0