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"Tokyo homeless people reiterate the whole nature of living in Tokyo in cardboard boxes, they're only slightly smaller than Tokyo apartments, and they have almost as many consumer goods. It's a nightmare of boxes within boxes."
- William Gibson

Ultraphone Ear-Disc  
  Wireless receivers that fit directly over the ears; they also offered noise reduction.  

These ultraphones were quite different from the one used by Wilma's companion scout the day I saved her from the attack of the bandit Gang. That one was contained entirely in a small pocket case. These, with which we were now equipped, consisted of a pair of ear discs, each a separate and self-contained receiving set They slipped into little pockets over our ears in the fabric helmets we wore, and shut out virtually all extraneous sounds...
Technovelgy from Armageddon: 2419 A.D., by Philip Frances Nowlan.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1928
Additional resources -

I thought this was an interesting idea. First, the receivers were actually a separate piece from the sending device (see Chest Disc, which also offered a voice-activation feature); this is probably a good way to do it if you don't want to run inconvenient wires from the earpiece to the device used for speaking.

Second, it appeared that the device offered noise-reduction or filtration; if so, this is a very early use of that idea.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Armageddon: 2419 A.D.
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip Frances Nowlan
  Tech news articles related to Armageddon: 2419 A.D.
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip Frances Nowlan

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