Early hearing-loss assessment relied on tuning-fork duration and distance thresholds.

Evidence

Measurements of the auditory perception of intensity were therefore somewhat restricted and were extremely imprecise. Otologists quantified hearing loss by using tuning forks and made measurements of how long a patient could hear a sound or how far away an examiner could be before a patient could not hear a sound. Due to the limitations in achieving both accurate and precise intensity levels, early scientists focused their endeavors more on pitch and sound localization than other acoustic quantities. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 73

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the history of audiometry and how clinical hearing testing evolved into modern audiograms.