Dowsing, I get confirmation that Louis matacia did invent the anger rod but that a wooden rod, taken from a branch of a tree and shaped more like a letter T, was used by dowsers , prior to the angle rod and as well as the Y rod, to find water.
Geoff
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel (Polonius)
I can't find the reference in The Divining Hand (pp199-200)- it doesn't seem to explicitly say that Louis invented the L-rod, but it could be interpreted that way I guess. It refers to them as 'Matacia's wire rudders'.
Grahame The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
The March 1961 Journal of the BSD (pages 163-166) has an article titled "Dowsing with the angle rod" reprinted from a 1938 issue of the Journal, and taken from a talk by E. P. Wilson to the BSD on 13 January 1938. The article begins: "About a year ago I saw a diviner walking over some fields holding a pair of angle rods." There we have it, back at least to 1937, well before Matacia.
It is certainly a pity that old issues of the BSD Journal are not more widely available. There is such a wealth of history there.
I am wondering also about the Russell Crow movie, "The Water Diviner" which begins with the protagonist (played by Crowe) dowsing for water using L-rods. The action is set a few years after the Battle of Gallipoli, so say 1920. It seems a tad early for L-rods.
plazak wrote:The March 1961 Journal of the BSD (pages 163-166) has an article titled "Dowsing with the angle rod" reprinted from a 1938 issue of the Journal, and taken from a talk by E. P. Wilson to the BSD on 13 January 1938. The article begins: "About a year ago I saw a diviner walking over some fields holding a pair of angle rods." There we have it, back at least to 1937, well before Matacia.
It is certainly a pity that old issues of the BSD Journal are not more widely available. There is such a wealth of history there.
There we have it, back at least to 1937, well before Matacia.
I've just been through the index for Barrett & Besterman's The Divining Rod for metal/angle rods and found nothing. There are several metal versions of Y-rods, e.g. watch-spring material, and many pictures, including hands-only and I-rod dowsing, but nothing with a right-angle bend. So, unknown in 1926, at least by those authors.
I found a reference in Capt. W H Trinder's book 'Dowsing', dating from 1939, where he mentions angle rods as though they are some new-fangled gadget that he doesn't entirely trust as a dowsing tool - possibly referencing the Wilson talk that Plazak mentioned.
Trinder gives a sketch and suggests L-rods of 20 inches with a handle of 6 inches.
Grahame The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
I found a reference in Colin Bloy's book I'm just going down the pub to do a few miracles (just republished on Lulu.com) where he refers to, "...the Mosaical rods, as L-rods used to be called in the 17th Century..."
I've never heard that term used before, but if it's correct it would push back the date of L-rod invention considerably!
Grahame The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.