Gerhard Julius Richard Fischer later Gerhard Julius Richard Fisher, Gerhard R. Fisher (March 18, 1899 – May 2, 1988) was a U.S. entrepreneur of German descent. He contributed to the development and popularity of the hand held

metal detector A metal detector is an instrument that detects the nearby presence of metal. Metal detectors are useful for finding metal objects on the surface, underground, and under water. The unit itself, consist of a control box, and an adjustable shaft, ...

Biography

Fisher was born in 1899 in Landeshut, Silesia, to Richard Hugo Georg Arthur Fischer, an engineer, and his wife Margaretha Julia Fischer née Job. His mother was from

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...

, where the parents also married. Around 1906, the Fischer family moved to

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

. After studying electrical engineering at the Dresden University, Fischer emigrated to the U.S. In 1931, he founded Fisher Research Laboratory, Inc. in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

, where he served as president until his retirement in 1967. While working with aircraft radio detection finders environment-dependent changes became apparent. From the interference by metal, he concluded that the device must also be suitable for detecting metal. Fisher shared the idea with

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

who correctly predicted the proliferation of hand held metal detector use. In 1937, he patented his metal detector. He died 1988 in Palo Alto.

Inventions

Although the actual inventor of the hand-held metal detector is disputed, the hand-held metal detector was made in 1925 and was first patented by Dr. Gerhard Fisher in 1931. A metal detector had been invented some forty years earlier (1881) by

Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and T ...

for the sole purpose of locating a lead bullet in President James A. Garfield.

Fisher Research Laboratory

He founded ''Fisher Research Laboratory'' to develop and market the hand held metal detectors in 1931.

References

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External links

Fisher Research Laboratory – Company HistoryMetal detecting history
(MDgear) 20th-century German inventors Engineers from Bavaria German emigrants to the United States Year of birth missing Year of death missing {{germany-engineer-stub