A brief history regarding Fisher Metal Detectors.

It was during the late 1920’s a German immigrant by the name of Dr Gerhard Fisher (who studied electronics at the University of Dresden and is founder of Fisher Metal Detectors) obtained the first patent ever to be issued on aircraft radio direction finders while working as a research engineer in Los Angeles. At the time his work had begun to attract the interest of one Dr Albert Einstein who after seeing the equipment demonstrated stated that “radio direction finders would be used world wide both in the air, on land and at sea”.

Although during the early years when direction finders were being used aircraft pilots found that errors would happen to their bearings when a metal object came between the transmitter and receiver or when they passed over certain areas (it was in these areas that highly conductive mineralized formations were found). After carrying out some investigation Dr Fisher found that a portable electronic prospecting instrument could be developed which used the same principles as the direction finders but would instead detect the presence of small buried objects or ore deposits.

He continued carrying out research on this subject and in 1931 he founded the Fisher Research Laboratory (set up in the garage behind his home the infancy of Fisher Metal Detectors). With the assistance of 4 employees he began to produce the “Metallascope”, which was a rugged easy to use metal detector. Although by today’s standards it would have been a very ungainly device consisting of 2 large flat wooden boxes which contained simple copper coils, 5 vacuum tubes and a number of other components. Within a very short period of time not only had it caught the imagination of the people in the USA but also many around the world as well and Fisher Metal Detectors had begun.

In fact by 1936 sales had become so large on the “Metallascope” which had now been nicknamed the “M-Scope” that Fisher Metal Detectors home base, Fischer Research Laboratory, had to move locations and was now being accepted as the standard to which all types of electronic metal detection equipment should be made. Then before the beginning of World War II in 1939 Fisher Metal Detectors moved to an even larger premises and the company was called upon to contribute its technical competence to the war effort both during Word War II and the subsequent Korean Conflict.

Because of the popularity of the M-Scope and because the patent rights Fisher Metal Detectors had on this item was expiring a number of competitors began producing similar pieces of equipment and yet Fisher Metal Detectors managed to maintain their position as they would keep in close contact with clients who used their machines in order to use their wealth of experience to design new models.

In fact over the years Fisher Metal Detectors has designed and produced even more sophisticated products as well as metal detectors such as Geiger counters, Radio Communication Systems, Voltage Detectors and Cable Fault Locators.

Again in 1961 the Fisher Metal Detectors moved once more to a larger production facility in Belmont, California and finally in 1967 Dr Fisher retired from Fisher Metal Detectors after firmly establishing his name in the annals of electronic history. Then because Fisher Metal Detectors continued to grow they moved in 1974 and finally in 1990 Fisher Metal Detectors built their own spacious modern manufacturing plant in Los Banos, California and this is where the world’s oldest metal detector company is now located.

This is the history of Fisher Metal Detectors,

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