Big Boys Hobbies

very vintage detector

B

Bounder

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I was reading a Modern Mechanix magazine from april 1936. There was a short article about a machine used to find mineral deposits and battlefield relics. The inventor discovered it was also good for locating meteorites. The article is on page 86. I am not able to scan stuff so hopefully you can look up the article. When you see the picture, you will realize just how good we have it.
 
I've seen that digitized and linked to forums before. But can't find the link right now. Maybe someone else has that handy.

The detector was only capable of finding very large items . Like cannon balls, or mayonnaise-jar sized parrot shells, etc....

Detectors that were sensitive enough to find coin sized items (and thus buttons, bullets, rings, etc...) didn't arrive till the 1950s. And even then-so, were clumsy, a bear to balance, didn't work in all soils, and wasn't that widespread as a hobby.

Not until the early 1960s, did it begin to take hold as a way to find individual coins. But I'll bet those early 1960s coin machines were doing good to get 3" deep :)
 
Very cool! Crazy to think how far metal detectors have really come.....

I think the first known metal detector was used in 1881. President Garfield was shot and they could not locate the bullet lodged in him so they enlisted Alexander Graham Bell, who used a crude metal detector called an “induction balance” to search for the slug. The idea was great but the machine kept picking up the metal springs in the mattress and unfortunately President Garfield passed away some time later due to an infection.
 
If one compares the progress made by metal detector manufacturers to those of telephone manufacturers telephones have vastly improved over what improvement has been made in detectors.

In the early 50's if one wanted to make a phone call from the east coast to the west coast it sometimes took a number of hours while each operator patched the call thru to the next one down the line.

Your smart phone now has more computing power than was used to put man on the moon.

The reason telephones have progressed faster than metal detectors is Profit. Far more people demanding more and more performance from the telephone than has ever been demanded from detector manufacturers. Manufacturers have been forced to spend money on research and development.

Research and Development in any industry costs large sums of money. Until recently it does not appear that metal detector manufacturers were willing to expend those dollars.

We see those who rested on their laurels going out of business because they can no longer compete.

Those that are spending the dollars on research and development will the be the ones surviving as we demand better technology
 
georgeinsc said:
If one compares the progress made by metal detector manufacturers to those of telephone manufacturers telephones have vastly improved over what improvement has been made in detectors.

In the early 50's if one wanted to make a phone call from the east coast to the west coast it sometimes took a number of hours while each operator patched the call thru to the next one down the line.

Your smart phone now has more computing power than was used to put man on the moon.

The reason telephones have progressed faster than metal detectors is Profit. Far more people demanding more and more performance from the telephone than has ever been demanded from detector manufacturers. Manufacturers have been forced to spend money on research and development.

Research and Development in any industry costs large sums of money. Until recently it does not appear that metal detector manufacturers were willing to expend those dollars.

We see those who rested on their laurels going out of business because they can no longer compete.

Those that are spending the dollars on research and development will the be the ones surviving as we demand better technology
Click to expand...

Now if they could just improve the voice quality of cellphones. I listen to a lot of talkradio and most sound absolutely muffled compared to the older landline phones of 20-30 years ago.
 
This is about the only kind of thing I can post now because the ground is still frozen granite hard. When is global warming to start?
 
georgeinsc said:
..... The reason telephones have progressed faster than metal detectors is Profit. Far more people demanding more and more performance from the telephone than has ever been demanded from detector manufacturers. Manufacturers have been forced to spend money on research and development. ....
Click to expand...


George, I must politely disagree with this post. This notion, that you suggest, has come up before on threads. Eg.: Why the grand advancements in computers, cell-phones, cameras , etc... in the recent decades. Yet for metal detectors, any advancements have slowed to a crawl in the last 20 to 30 yrs. there's machines. Heck, the Explorers and CZ's are 25-ish and more years old now ! Everything new that hits the market is mostly whistles and bells.

Contrast to the gigantic leaps of md'ing evolution that took place from 1965 to 1995, for instance.

Your rationale of "lack of funding" is not correct. The real reason is: You can't break the laws of physics. We've approached the point of "diminishing returns". And NO AMOUNT of money that you throw at the problem will change that.

All the wonderful computer and phone advancements are ALL a function of "faster and smaller". But for md'ing, there's ONLY so much information you can pump into the ground, and only so much information you can retrieve back out of the ground . "Faster and Smaller" doesn't change that.
 
I am an old phart. So its okay if you disagree with me I just hope you are wrong. I am just basing my asumptions on what i have seen over the past few decades.

The first telephone i ever saw was a box on the wall with a hand crank. Today I can communicate with nearly anyone nearly any where in the world almost instantly

The first two vessels i served on in the Navy we had one method of communications once we were out to sea any distance. That method was international morse code. When i retired I was using satellite relay to communicate Had you told me that I would have seen that kind of change in less than 20 years I would have thought that you had lost your mind.


I still think there will be more improvement in the future in the capability of metal detectors.

I do not believe that we have seen the limit of what a metal detector will be able to do in the future as companies do more research and development and better brains get involved.

.









Tom_in_CA said:
George, I must politely disagree with this post. This notion, that you suggest, has come up before on threads. Eg.: Why the grand advancements in computers, cell-phones, cameras , etc... in the recent decades. Yet for metal detectors, any advancements have slowed to a crawl in the last 20 to 30 yrs. there's machines. Heck, the Explorers and CZ's are 25-ish and more years old now ! Everything new that hits the market is mostly whistles and bells.

Contrast to the gigantic leaps of md'ing evolution that took place from 1965 to 1995, for instance.

Your rationale of "lack of funding" is not correct. The real reason is: You can't break the laws of physics. We've approached the point of "diminishing returns". And NO AMOUNT of money that you throw at the problem will change that.

All the wonderful computer and phone advancements are ALL a function of "faster and smaller". But for md'ing, there's ONLY so much information you can pump into the ground, and only so much information you can retrieve back out of the ground . "Faster and Smaller" doesn't change that.
Click to expand...
 
MuddyMo said:
This looks vintage.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Wh...700597?hash=item23b7ee42f5:g:LWYAAOSw1zlchIuu
Click to expand...

I bought my first "Whites" metal detector in 1968 but it looks nothing like that one. Unfortunately I don't have it any more. It is hard for me to remember much about it. It was a blue metal box about as big as a lunch box but not square. It seems like it had some kind of meter on the top of it. When you loaded it up with about 4 D batteries ( might have been more) you really needed a good arm. I'm not sure but I think it was a "BFO" "beat frequency oscillator". It didn't need motion and it was all metal mode only.
 
This is my oldest vintage machine. Maybe not as old as some but it's my oldest detector. It's a Fisher M-Scope.
M-Scope2.gif
 
Haldean said:
I bought my first "Whites" metal detector in 1968 but it looks nothing like that one. Unfortunately I don't have it any more. It is hard for me to remember much about it. It was a blue metal box about as big as a lunch box but not square. It seems like it had some kind of meter on the top of it. When you loaded it up with about 4 D batteries ( might have been more) you really needed a good arm. I'm not sure but I think it was a "BFO" "beat frequency oscillator". It didn't need motion and it was all metal mode only.
Click to expand...

Kinda like this?
 

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There was a time way back in history when it was proposed to close the patent office because everything had been invented. I don't remember if it was in the 1700s or 1800s.
 
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