Charles L. Coffin (1844-1926) of Detroit was awarded U.S. patent 428,459 for an arc welding process using a metal electrode. This was the first time that metal melted from the electrode carried across the arc to deposit filler metal in the joint to make a weld. Two years earlier, Nikolay Slavyanov presented the same idea of transferring metal across an arc, but to cast metal in a mold.
References
Smil, Vaclav (2004). Creating the twentieth century: technical innovations of 1867-1914 and their lasting impact. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 95. ISBN 0-19-516874-7. 0-19-516874-7 ↩
Cary, Howard B.; Helzer, Scott C. (2005), Modern Welding Technology, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, ISBN 0-13-113029-3 0-13-113029-3 ↩
Sapp, Mark, A History of Welding, from Hepheastus to Apollo, archived from the original on 2008-11-12, retrieved 2008-09-21 https://web.archive.org/web/20081112034238/http://www.weldinghistory.org/whistoryfolder/welding/index.html ↩