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The history of fisher metal detectors begins way back in the late 1920s with a German graduate of Dresden university who had immigrated to America. Dr Gerhard Fisher was working in Los Angeles developing direction finding equipment intended for use in aircraft and his work was even recognized by Albert Einstein. Dr Fisher listened carefully to pilots who used his system and found that they all experienced interference in certain areas and he explored this problem. He found that these areas all had conductive mineral deposits and that if he passed a piece of metal between the receiver and transmitter of his directional finder that readings changed. He immediately realized that a small device could be developed along the lines of his directional finder that could be used to locate minerals and underground objects.
He worked further on this and in 1931 turned his home garage into a small factory producing the first crude metal detector called the metallascope and called his garage factory the Fisher Research Laboratory. Four people were employed here to make this machine which compared to today's detectors was heavy and bulky as electronics had not yet been developed and large vacuum valves were required to make it work. Sales increased until the garage was no longer big enough to cope with the demand and in 1936 they into another building and the device was patented. A variety of people now used this product from geologists to hobby hunters and utility companies to police officers searching for weapons. Within three years they had to move again into bigger workshops to cope with demand and research. The research was very important as fisher had to be at the forefront of technology because his patent expired letting other companies start to produce their own devices. He did this well and remained the major producer of metal detectors as well as producing items such as Geiger radiation counters, radio equipment and electrical metering systems. Even throughout the second world war and the Korean war the development of the metal detectors was never allowed to be stopped even although Dr Fisher worked on military projects at these times.
The next move was in 1961 to Belmont and an even larger manufacturing facility as the company was still growing steadily year by year. Six years after this move Dr Fisher retired leaving Fisher Research Laboratory a well known and respected company. It continued to grow and moved again in 1974 and in 1990 to Los Banos and is now owned by First Texas Products who bought the company in 2006.
Today the company still has its great reputation for quality products and offers a large range of metal detectors for treasure hunters including gold, coin, relic and underwater detectors. Industrial detectors for utility companies for finding cables, pipes and valves are also manufactured at the fisher factory. Security which is so important nowadays is also a branch of fisher detectors with a large range of handheld and walk through metal detectors available.
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