The first stethoscope (in Greek stethos means
chest and skopos means observer) was invented in
1816 by René Laennec, a young French physician.
One day Laennec had to examine a young, obese
female patient. His wish was to examine her without
placing his ear upon her chest, thus violating
social and cultural norms, so he had to think of
a solution. Recalling that sound is better heard
when traveling through solids, Laennec rolled
up a piece of paper into a cylinder and applied
one end to the region of the heart and the other to
his ear. This was the first stethoscope [4]. Later,
stethoscopes were made of more rigid materials
such as tin, copper and wood. Their geometry
also changed from cylindrical to a truncated cone,
membranes were added, and the old monaural
stethoscopes developed into today’s binaural
phonendoscopes (for an additional description
of the historical development of stethoscopes see
[4]). The model described in this paper refers to
cone stethoscopes without membranes.