Metal detecting has a long, and often strange history. Interest in using electrical current to locate buried metal began in the late 1800’s. At that time, people understood that certain metals somehow interacted with electrical currents, though it was unclear how this worked. The first attempts at metal detection were aimed at finding rare metals, like gold. Unfortunately, the results were not always what buyers hoped for. In another bizarre twist, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell attempted to used metal detection to find the bullet that had become lodged inside President James Garfield. Though it seems simple enough, Bell’s machine was too powerful and kept returning a signal for the metal bed frame on which the president had been laid.