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A pictorial history of welding as seen through the pages of the Welding Journal
It has been a long, long while from 1919 to 1994. Despite the wars, one of the most severe market
crashes the world has ever seen, the landing of man on the moon, periods of enormous prosperity, the
invention of electron and laser beam technologies, and production lines where robots help manufacture
millions of automobiles, the welding industry kept rising to the occasion. The Welding Journal covered
these times through the editorial leadership of such individuals as Bill Spraragen, Bonney Rossi, Ted
Schoonmaker and Jeff Weber. This being the 75th birthday of the American Welding Society, what
better time to show you what things looked like during the roaring twenties, the depression years, and
WWII - "way back when."
The following photographs come from past issues of the Welding Journal, from 1922 to the present.
An early structural design, known as the Ewertz type of electric arc welded
vessel, was used to compare the relative costs and strengths of welded vs. riveted shops. This picture,
taken in 1924, shows a 400% overload on a Ewertz type of welded vessel. At the time, E.H. Ewertz, the
inventor of the design, was president of the American Welding Society.
Welding took to the stage at the AWS 1933 national fall meeting in
Detroit with the presentation of a four-act play, The Prosperity Process. Sponsored jointly by AWS and
the International Acetylene Association, this industrial drama drew 1,600 attendees. One critic
described the play as "stirring." In one scene, which took place in a weld shop, a complete
demonstration of welding, cutting and weld testing was given on "stage right."
Regarded as a "first" at the time, three 10,000ton cargo ships were launched simultaneously at Todd Shipbuilding Corp., South Portland, ME, in 1942.
W.H. Hobart, vice president of Hobart Brothers Co., attributed the feat to three things. First, the steels
did not have to be overlapped as they are when riveting is used, thus saving a great deal of steel.
Second, he said, new welders could be trained much faster than new riveters. And third, welding lends
itself more readily to production line assembly.
The Nautilus, the first of the United States Navy's fleet of atomic
submarines, was launched at the Electric Boat Division shipyard in Groton, Conn., in 1954. Heavily
welded from stem to stern, the Nautilus is shown here being christened by first Lady Mamie
Eisenhower. Standing by is John Jay Hopkins, chairman and president of General Dynamics
Corporation.
In this 1962 photograph, three electron beam welds are being made
simultaneously in a hard-vacuum chamber for the welding of steel and exotic metals for use on the B-70
bomber and supersonic aircraft. The picture was taken at North American Aviation in Los Angeles.
http://www.aws.org/resources/detail/as-time-goes-by