The MRS technique was originally conceived in the 1960s by  Russell H. Varian, one of the inventors of the proton magnetometer. SNMR is a product of a joint effort by many scientists and engineers who started developing this method in the USSR under the guidance of A.G. Semenov and continued this work all over the world. Semenov's team used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for non-invasive detection of proton-containing liquids (hydrocarbons or water) in the subsurface. The Voevodsky Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences fabricated the first version of the instrument for measurements of magnetic resonance signals from subsurface water ("hydroscope") in 1981.