The next time you plan to do a spot of welding, take a little time to consider the history and where it all began. In order to have an idea of where it all started, allow your mind to take you back in time to the Iron Age when people had discovered how to extract the metal from rock. If you look at artifacts found in Egypt and the regions around the Middle East from that time, you will see that the metalwork is very decorative and intricate. They created metal boxes which they decorated with other pieces of metal and all before acetylene had been discovered.
During the 19th century, Edmund Davy discovered acetylene and how to use it to weld metals together. The discovery of arc lighting made the process of welding easier than ever before. This made it easier to use welding to join pieces of metal together. Carbon welding was the next innovation and this was invented by Frenchman Auguste De Meritens. Welding became more popular during the early 20th century and further improvements in the accuracy of the arc were perfected during this time. In 1914 the first stick electrode was used and this allowed the process of welding to become more precise and for finer work to be done. The stick electrode also allowed for projection and seam
pipe welding machine to take place and this was a huge breakthrough. Further advancements were made and as the quality of the gas improved, so too did the quality of the welding.
Welding businesses expanded and became more prevalent around the time of the First World War. As a result, countries began competing with each other in all types of technology to try and get the edge on everyone else and welding was one of those technologies. The countries which were at war were all trying produce more powerful ships by using welding and other metallurgy technology because the country that ruled the oceans was able to control the supply routes. There was a bit of a welding revolution around this time and the Europeans used arc welding in ship building whereas in the United States of America, arc welding was used for repairing ships. The 2 different uses have allowed welding to be successfully developed for many different purposes. It is not only shipping that has benefited from welding, aircraft have also seen the use of welding technology. Early aircraft had many of their metal components put together by welding.
