I saw this while surfing (pretty long)

The earliest reference to dowsing as it is practised to day came from the German speaking lands of northern Europe in the fifteenth century.

By the sixteenth century miners in several parts of Germany were using dowsing to locate veins of mineral ore. Georg Bauer also known as Geogius Agricola (1494 – 1555) described how dowsers search for ore in his famous work De Re Metallca. He wrote: All alike grasp the forks of the twig with their hands, clenching their fists, it being necessary that their clenched fingers should be held towards the sky in order that the twig should be raised at that end where the two branches meet. Then they wander hither and thither at random through mountainous regions. It is said that the moment they place their feet on a vein the twig immediately turns and twists and so by its action discloses the vein; when they move their feet again and go away from that spot the twig becomes once more immobile.

As demand for ore increased mines opened up across Europe. Prospectors travelled far in the search for new deposits and metal ore, amongst these prospectors were dowers.

In England, Elizabeth I encouraged German prospectors and mining experts to develop the resources of her land. Together with their expertise in smelting and metal working they also brought their art of searching for metal ores with a forked twig.

One part of England that benefited from German mining expertise was in the county of Somerset. By the mid seventeenth century miners in the local Mendip Hills where using the rod to help them find veins of lead and zinc ore and the practice came to the attention of Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691), one of the founding fathers of modern science. Boyle was intrigued and reported: One Gentleman, who lives near the lead mines in Somersetshire, leading me over those parts of the mines where he know that Matalline Veins did run, made be take note of the stooping of the Wand when passed over a Vein of Oar, and protested that the motion of his hand did not at all contribute to the indications of the wand, but that sometimes when he held it very fast, it would bent so strongly as to break in his hand. And to convince me that he believed him self, he did upon the promises made by the stooping Wand put him self to the great charge of digging in untried places for Mine (but with what success he has not yet informed me). Among the miners themselves I found that some made use of the Wand and others laughed at it.

The term dowsing may have come from the miners in the Medip Hills. In 1692 John Locke (1632 – 1704) the famed Somerset Philosopher, referred to the alleged ability of the ‘deusing-rod to discover mines of gold and silver. Evidently the Philosopher had heard the local miners use their own word for the twig known to the Germans as the wishing rod or Wunschelrute
The German dowsers also introduced dowsing to another county in south west England, Cornwall where local miners developed dowsing into an advanced prospecting technique. William Pryce, of Redruth, the great authority on Cornish mining practice, included an account of contemporary mine dowsing in his 1778 work Mineraogia Cornubiensis. It was written by his friend William Cookworthy, of Plymouth, a pioneering industrialist. Cookworthy reported that local miners made their dowsing rods from a single forked twig of hazel or other wood between two and a half and three feet long. Alternatively, they used 'two separate shoots tied together, with some vegetable substance as packthread'. Then he went on to make one of the most penetrating observations on dowsing that has ever been written, , A man ought to hold the rod with the same indifference and inattention to, or reasoning about it or its effects, as he holds a fishing rod or a walking stick.' For, according to Cookworthy, the rod , constantly answers in the hands of peasants, women and children, who hold it simply without puzzling their minds with doubts or reasoning’s.

William Cookworthy advised young dowsers to gain experience over known lodes, such as those visible near the sea shore. Then he instructed the novice dowser:
Walk steadily and slowly on with it (the rod); and a person that hath been accustomed to carry it will meet a single repulsion and attraction, every three, four, or five yards, which must not be heeded, it being only from the water that is between every bed of Killas (slate), Grouan (soft granite) or other strata. When the holder approaches a Lode so near its semidiameter, the rod feels loose in the hands and is very sensibly repelled toward the face. If it is thrown back so far as to touch the hat, it must be brought forward to its usual elevation, when it will continue to be repelled till the foremost foot is over the edge of the Lode. But as soon as the foremost foot is beyond its limits, the attraction from the hindmost foot, which is still on the Lode, or else the repulsion on the other side, or both, throw the rod back toward the face. The distance from the point where the attraction begun, and where it ended, is the breadth of the Lode.

Cookworthy said that a good dowser could in this way discover all the features of concealed lodes: their changes in breadth, where they pinched out, and where they were displaced by crosscutting fractures. He noted that dowsing was particularly useful for tracing lodes that were, "alive to grass" in other words that contained workable ore right up to the surface. He also recommended the technique for finding what geologists would now call fracture zones - belts of rock shattered by past Earth movements. Although they were not necessarily mineralised, miners found it much easier to drive their tunnels through these zones than through solid rocks.

Clearly, Cornish dowsers had developed their art into quite an elaborate technique by the eighteenth century. But did it really work? William Pryce certainly thought so, for he quoted numerous dowsing successes in the county. For instance, after the Reverend Henry Hawkins Tremayne had found some stream tin in a pond at Heligan, miners speculated that a lode might be found nearby -. A dowser then located what he thought was a lode below ground, and the miners sank a shaft there. A lode was indeed found though unfortunately it did not contain enough tin to make mining profitable. In two other instances, Fryce reported, miners sank shafts on dowsing evidence, one at St. Germains, another between Penzance and Newlyn. In both cases, lodes containing mundick - an old mining term for iron sulphides - were found. Again, Pryce related, William Cookworthy managed to trace the course of a concealed lode near St. Austell. At one point Cookworthy declared that the lode had been squeezed to nothing; this was later confirmed to be correct by the local miners. On another occasion, Cookworthy traced a lode from point inland to the cliff at St. Austell Down. There he found by dowsing that the lode 'had a horse in it', in other words, it had been split in two. Miners subsequently confirmed that this was indeed the case.

Pryce reported another dowsing feat.
A certain Captain Riheira had deserted the King of Spain's service in the reign of Queen Anne and had been rewarded with the post of Captain Commandant of the Plymouth garrison. Ribeira was a keen dowser and had by this means discovered a deposit of copper ore near Okehampton, in Devon. Later, a mine was started there, which operated for some years.
Pryce and Cookworthy's detailed description of Cornish mine dowsing in the eighteenth century shows how highly the leading English mineralogists of the day regarded the technique. This respect was echoed throughout Europe. In the German mines, for instance, dowsers this time enjoyed a standing that has never since been equalled. Officially their status was higher than that of surveyors, and mine dowsers were expected to possess a professional diploma in dowsing.

Mineral lode dowsing was equally valued in other parts of the world where Europeans had settled. In the fabulously rich silver mines of the High Andes in South America, for instance, the Spanish mining authorities were using the technique to help locate the abundant lodes of silver ore that had made the region around Potosi the largest source of silver in the Western world. Alonzo Barha, the Potosi priest and mining expert, described a peculiar T-shaped rod of his own design which dowser then used in the Potosi mines.

How had mine dowsers achieved this surprising status? One reason, clearly, was a record of success good enough to impress hardnosed mine owners as well as technical experts like William Pryce. But success alone would not have been enough in an age when scientific thought was developing rapidly and causes were being sought for all phenomena. It seems'likely that an equally important reason for dowsing's high standing was that it could he explained in terms of contemporary scientific ideas. Thus, before quoting Cookworthv's description of practical dowsing, Pryce gave a lengthy exposition of dowsing theory.

In fact, from the sixteenth century onwards, the bending of a forked twig over a hidden mineral vein had spawned theories in the same way as any other natural phenomenon. From the start, some sceptics had maintained that the dowsers moved the rod themselves and that this had nothing to do with the presence mineral veins. Nevertheless, this would hardly explain the successes the technique.

DOWSING IN MODERN TIMES
In more modern times dowsing has been and is still used in many areas of life. It is used for: Finding underground water supplies, finding undergound oil and minerals, health and healing, archaelogical searches, detecting Earth energies, site surveys for buildings, tracing lost objects and people, Geopathic stress, agriculture and soil testing, fault finding and far more.

Professor Hans Dieter Betz (professor of physics, Munich university) headed a team of scientists that investigated the ability of dowsers to find underground drinkable supplies, taking them to 10 different countries and, on the advice of dowers, sank some 2,000 wells with a very high success rate. In Sri Lanka, where the geological conditions are said to be difficult, some 691 wells were drilled for, based on the advice of dowsers, with a 96% success rate. Geohydrologists given the same task took two months to evaluate a site where a dowser would compete his survey in minutes. The geohydrologists had a 21% success rate, as a result of which the German government have sponsored 100 dowers to work in the arid zones of Southern India to find drinkable water.

In Russia they teach dowsing as a science. Many of the top dowsers are doctors, engineers and scientists. Professor Alexander P. Dubrov, Pro. Of Biophysics, Doctor of Geophysics (author of " geomagnetic Fields and Life) being one of them.

Dowsing is an ancient art successfully used to locate water for centuries. Professional dowsers may have a 99% hit rate in locating water many operate their own drilling rigs on a no find no fee basis. The average cost to drill is £3000 a time.

Dowsing has been used in USA texas to locate oil wells. Dowsers are called Doodlebuggers. One of the most sucessfull dowsers is Paul Clement Brown. From his contacts with leading oil and gas operaters over a quarter of a century, Brown learned that many important oil fields were discovered, not by geolgical trained technicians, but by gifted dowsers like him self.

US Marines used dowsing to accuratly locate Viet Cong tunnels and booby traps.

DOWSING ALONG THE PSI-TRACK
By Jens A Tellefsen, Jr and Sven Magnusson
Have Swedish psi-researchers discovered something very important - a repeatable experiment?

Introduction
When a person concentrates vividly on a physical object in his surroundings, a "psi-track" seems be established to the object. This track can be detected by dowsing.
What is a thought? An idea or a mental image, Which appears in a mind and perhaps leads to action? Yes. That might be the answer. But, The notion that thought may have an extension in the surrounding space, may be something concrete and measurable, does not belong to our usual ideas about how the world is structured. But Swedish parapsychological experiments suggest that that may actually be the case.

The discovery of the psi-track
It is now (1997) ten years since the so-called psi-track was discovered. The psi-track is the measurable track of a directed thought.
Since the first experiment was done, some Swedish researchers have performed a series of experiments, Which have been intentionally published. Dr Nils 0. Jacobson and Dr. Jens A. Tellefsen wrote a report, which won the first prize in a parapsychological contest in England and was subsequently published in one of the leading parapsychological journals, the English Journal of the Society for Psychical Research January 1994.
In Sweden. the first full-size book about the experiments with the psi-track has been published. It is written by Gote Andersson, a painter. who originally discovered the psi-track.

One day in 1987, when Gote visited his father, Arthur Andersson, he asked him to try to detect the human aura around himself by means of a dowsing rod. He had read in a magazine that this could actually be done. Arthur, who is an experienced dowser, thought the idea was crazy but did what Gote wanted him to do, and to his own surprise he obtained a strong reaction with the dowsing rod around Gote.

Gote then concentrated his thoughts on a chair some metres in front of him, and since he is an artist, he has a very good mental image-seeing ability. He then asked Arthur to walk around the chair with his dowsing rod. To Arthur's amazement, the divining rod reacted strongly around the chair and even stranger, Arthur found that with the help of the dowsing rod, a distinct "track" of deflection could be followed in the space aIl the way between Gote and the chair. In that way, as far an we know the first psi-track wan discovered.

Scientific experiments

Gote became immensely interested in this discovery and. during several years, he devoted much time to researching the psi-track together with several experienced local dowsers, and he found that the phenomenon repeated itself over and over again and seemed to follow certain basic laws. He realised that he had found a hitherto unknown anomalous phenomenon and wanted it to be scientifically investigated. With this aim in mind he contacted Jens A. Tellefsen, a physicist and associate professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (Tekniska Hogskolan) in Stockholm. Later, Nils 0. Jacobson was also contacted and attached himself to the research project. He is a psychiatrist with a very good knowledge of parapsychology. Together with Jen's wife, Kristina Anjou, they studied scientifically the psi-track for an extended length of time.

The experiments have mostly been done outdoors with the help of dowsing rods, which have shown to be excellent instruments in order to find the psi-tracks. In order to facilitate the experimental procedure they preferred to work over large areas, for instance on fields of at least about 100 x 100 metres, which, before the experiments, had been carefully checked by dowsing for water veins, electric cables and other possibly disturbing structures.
The participants in the simplest of these (single-blind) experiments, have the following tasks:
One person, 'the sender', chooses a spot as the 'sending place' and then hides a chosen target object within a reasonable distance (20 to 100 metres) from the sending place. Standing in the sending place, he makes a strong mental concentration on the target object. This, supposedly, creates the psi-track. He will tell nobody about his choice of target and walks away from the research area. A dowser now begins to look for the track. He or she works slowly in small circles around the sending place, and, when the dowser gets the usual reaction from his rod, the spot is clearly marked. The dowser will then continue to walk around the sending place in successively larger circles and, when the markings in the circles form a linear track in some direction, the dowser begins to walk in a zigzag way over this track. Through the reactions he gets, it is then possible to follow the psi-track, mostly straightforward toward the hidden object. When the dowser is not getting any reaction at all, the track ends and the target is mostly found.

When performed in this way, with the indicated procedure, it is a very striking experience for those who are witnessing the whole thing. Experiments with the psi-tracks can be done in slightly different ways, not necessarily with exactly the same protocol as described above. The results are usually the same. In some experiments, an assistant takes part in the experiment and hides the target object, whereupon the sender, who does not know the location of the target, creates the psi-track by concentration on the object. In other experiments the same person may act both as sender and dowser. This is the prerequisite for a number of double-blind experiments, which have been performed.

It must be stated that these experiments are so designed that absolutely no traces can be found on the ground from the feet of the sender or the assistant and leading in some obvious way to the hidden object.
Of 40 double-blind experiments, at six different occasions during a three year period, in 32 cases, the researchers succeeded within a span of about in half an hour to find the hidden objects. As the object is very small, for instance a rock crystal in a field of 100 x 100 metres size or more, the result is remarkable, to say the least. Is this the first repeatable psi-experiment in history? No one knows, but the experimenters are eagerly waiting for others to replicate their results.

Real-life experience
The psi-track procedure can be used in real-life situations, for instance to find lost objects or to locate animals or people who have gone astray in deep forests. Here are two examples of very many, of an anecdotal nature.

At Skaggebol estate in the district of Varmland, a certain weed hoe had been lost since the summer of 1990. In August 1991, Gote decided to try to find it with his method. Mrs Gertrud Holm, who sometimes helps in the office at the farm, has some experience of dowsing, but had not earlier tried the psi-track method. She was even sceptical of it, but, anyhow, agreed to give it a try.
Gote acted as sender and Gertrud with her dowsing rod detected a possible psi-track, which was duly marked by sticks. The track went directly behind the huge barn of the estate. There the hoe was found among high-growing stinging nettles, about 100 metres from the sending place.
On 13th December 1992, Mr and Mrs Anders and Berith Lindgren were out deep in a forest hunting with some friends. During the hunt, their dog ran away and disappeared. They searched for the dog until late at night, and also the two following days. On 16th December, they enlisted the dowser Leif Andersson's help. Leif had at this time been extensively working with Gote and the researchers.
Someone thought that he had earlier heard barkings coming from a certain hill in the forest, so this was chosen as the first sending place. Anders and Berith each made one sending, from different places on the hill. The psi-tracks were detected in the usual way by Leif and marked on a map. The tracks were found to point in the northeast direction, towards a small lake in the forest, about two kilometres from the hunting place. The group started to search the forest. During the search, Berith made three more sendings with the resultant tracks also pointing in the direction of the lake. At this point, the searching had to be interrupted as it was getting dark. On their way home, Anders made two additional sendings from the road, east and north of the lake. Here again, the psi-tracks pointed to the lake. The next day, Berith and an uncle of hers went directly to the small lake. Near the edge of the shore they found the body of the dog in the water. Apparently, it had gone through the thin ice that covered the lake on 13th December, and subsequently drowned in the struggle to survive.

Sources of this article are a report by Nils 0. Jacobson and Jens A. Tellefsen in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, January 1994 (49 Marloes Road, London, W8 6LA) and an article in Sokaren magazine, 3, 1994, written by Elisabet Broome, Kristina Anjou, and Jens A. Tellefesen, Jr