How was welding born?

Welding is nowadays a completely natural and very familiar job. Thanks to the emergence of various advanced techniques for joining materials together, technology and the construction industry in general have seen a gigantic development in this field. Thanks to the welding process, among other things, our world looks the way it does today.  

But how did welding originate and where to look for its genesis?

How has this craft changed over the years, how has it evolved and what discoveries have been made on the subject over the decades? Well, the process of joining metals together is a subject that has been discussed and considered since prehistoric times. Shortly after the invention of fire by humans, the first attempts were made to join materials together after they had been heated. This was done to bring them to a state of plasticity, which would make it easier to join the individual parts and forge them together. When steel was developed, it became the most common material used in the manufacture of various tools or even weapons. What was needed, therefore, was the skilful joining of parts together. This is how focal welding was developed. The Middle Ages, on the other hand, saw the beginnings of metal soldering, which greatly developed the production of all kinds of jewellery.  

A wave of new discoveries 

In the 19th century, two types of welding were invented: 

• electric, 
• gas. 

In 1862, Friedrich Wöhler invented carbide, which contributed to the development of gas welding. In 1882, the engineer Stanislaw Olszewski, together with Nikolai Bernados, developed the electric welding method. They used an electric arc that glowed between a carbon electrode and metal to melt the material. They used a metal rod to fill the groove between the joined edges of the materials. This method was improved by using a fusible metal electrode in place of the carbon electrode. 

 In 1894, Henry Maisson created a technique for obtaining carbide. Three years later, a way to store acetylene under high pressure was discovered. 1901 was the time when Charles Picard invented the acetylene-oxygen torch, which was used for welding.  

The 19th century development of welding brought many new methods to the profession. It was then that thermal welding, based on the chemical reaction of iron oxides and aluminium, got its start. 

 The early part of the 20th century saw the rapid development of acetylene combustion, which was applied to a wide variety of metals on a massive scale. They used an electric arc that glowed between a carbon electrode and the metal to melt the material. This method was improved by using a fusible metal electrode in place of the carbon electrode. In 1908, a Swedish scientist invented flux-coated metal electrodes. In 1924, atomic welding was developed in the United States and five years later submerged arc welding came into use. The 1930s saw the invention of the tungsten electrode, which was used for welding under the cover of various noble gases. During this time, welding tools were getting better and more precise, which offered new possibilities and allowed more complex methods to be created.  

Welding development and Poland 

At that time, it was not until after the First World War that arc welding began to be used in Poland, which was usually useful for erecting buildings or building wagons. In 1922, the Polish Association of Welding and Metal Cutting was founded and the Welding Section was established within it. The first congress of welders was held in 1939 in Warsaw, where the Welding Institute was established. However, due to the outbreak of the Second World War, the time for the establishment of this institution was postponed and it was finally established in 1945 in Gliwice. This institute is still in operation today. From 1951 onwards, the craft of welding was taught at polytechnics and in specialised schools dedicated to this very occupation. In addition, special textbooks were produced, a magazine for welding enthusiasts was established and even a Welding Commission of the Polish Committee for Standardisation was created. 

Thanks to all these projects, welding has seen a huge development in our country. Many steel structures, bridges, ships or boilers were built during this period. This in turn resulted in the more rapid construction of transformers, automatic or semi-automatic welding machines. It is noteworthy that the first welded bridge in the world was built in Poland in the 1930s. It was designed by Stefan Bryła, a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology. The structure was built in 1929. A year later, the first European welded building structure was built in Poland. Buildings such as the Poniatowski Bridge or the railway bridge under the Citadel in Warsaw, ships, carriages or various types of structures were created after the end of the Second World War. The Polish schools for welders were capable of producing workers of a really high calibre. Nowadays, it is impossible to imagine the development of technology without the ability to weld. This field is present in almost all branches of the economy. 

Latest technology 

Nowadays, welding is a highly developed industry. A lot of innovative equipment has entered the market and the role of man in the whole process has been strongly reduced. This has strongly reduced the risk of accidents by working in difficult conditions. In addition, production efficiency has increased considerably, allowing a variety of technology to be created much more efficiently in large quantities. The products of advanced welding are robust, functional and excellently made. Certainly, the future will only be better in terms of the automation of welding workplaces and the accuracy, speed and efficiency of the entire process. Perhaps humans will only play the role of supervising the machines, which will automatically do their advanced work.