From then to "now"
An interesting discussion here, not sure if it's just interesting to those of us that have "lived" the changes in metal detectors over the years or perhaps interesting to those that might want to know a little about the history of our hobby.
It's not my intent to write or claim that I'm an expert, that honor goes to people like Charles Garrett and others that pioneered metal detector design from BFO's to the wizardry of modern machines today.
There is however a book that I found when I first became interested in relic hunting and the Civil War. My interest in the Civil War became one not of North or South but one of humanitarian issues that ultimately resulted in the death of more than 600,000 Americans.
Howard Crouch, author of the book pictured was the pioneer in my opinion of finding Relics with metal detectors. Early machines like the Nautilus, Whites, and others were the only machines of choice in the day that began a subset to the hobby of finding coins, jewelry, and other goodies with detectors and called it "Relic Hunting".
There are those that would say back in those days that you could trip over relics and artifacts because there were so many scattered across the southern landscape.
To a certain degree there was some truth in such a statement but Howard Crouch conveyed in his book the real secret of finding things with metal detectors. They found deep things entangled in tree roots, big things, small things, gold and silver things were also found with these old machines that were to a large extent being built in garages at home by self educated people with an interest in what makes this contraption actually work.
One thing that was obvious in his writings was that you had to understand your machine! this was quickly achieved back then because there was only 2 or 3 detectors to choose from and they all basically did the same thing.
This requirement then was achieved ASAP because the secret to success was no secret at all. Howard Crouch knew that putting the coil over a target was primary to actually digging something up worth keeping and that research prior to turning the switch on was key to success and successful he was.
So, to a large degree we face the same thing today. I see a lot of posts describing hunts that include comments like "I dig everything" or my "number display is not real accurate on deep targets" and other descriptions that make one wonder about how far have we really come with todays machines? yes, there have been improvements but there's one thing that will surely never change if one is looking for specific targets and that is research research and a little more research.