Antique Dowsing Rod

In my collection of dowsing & LRL devices, my favorite is the one shown below. I know little about it, other than what I found in "Doodlebug Edition of Treasure Trails" by Sanschi (1938). Sanschi describes a device called the "Electric Flashlight Treas-o-meter" (also shown below) but his version is a bobber-style device. He states the cost was $40 (pre-1938) and I got this one on eBay for $53. If anyone has additional info on this thing let me know.

You may be able to do an old patent search. The numbers in that drawing might be there to reference a description of what it's function is on the device per. the inventor.
A couple of other books authored by Roy Julius Santschi which may contain information on the above pictured device are:

Doodlebugs and mysteries of treasure hunting (1941)

Modern divining rods: The construction and operation of electrical treasure finders, including geophysical prospecting methods (1939)

Jon

Most of my books are still in storage, but I did recently get a super-rare copy of Modern Divining Rods Book 1, and there is a passing mention of an Electric Flashlight bobber that was patented in 1910. USPTO online search does not do keywords back that far, so I will have to go to a USPTO depository and manually search for it.

Checking patents applied for/issued in Europe/world may help also.
Jon

There you go Carl.

http://www.epoline.org/portal/public