As these photos show, the history of America cannot be told without the history of welding.
From wartime manufacturing to the Tennessee Valley Authority work projects, the welder's torch has lit the path for Americans through our most trying times.
1. A welder works on the engine support assembly of an M-3 tank at the Chrysler tank arsenal in Detroit during WWII.
2. Another welder fabricating M-3 tank parts
3. Welders building the war emergency pipeline from Longview, Texas to Norris City, Illinois
4. A welder at a military base in California
5. A welder working in the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyards in Baltimore, Maryland
6. Another welder in the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyards
7. A welder fabricating transformers at Westinghouse in Sharon, Pennsylvania
8. A welder makes Bofors forty-millimeter gun mounts in a Midwest rubber factory converted for war production
9. A student learns at De Land school in an aircraft construction class in Florida
10. A welder in Stamford, Connecticut takes a break while working on a sub-chaser.
11. James Kermit Lucas welds on the top deck of the ship "Booker T. Washington"
12. A welder works on a sub-chaser
13. A Tennessee Valley Authority welder takes a break at the Watts Bar Dam hydroelectric plant
14. A female welder works on sub-assembly for a B-25 "Billy Mitchell" bomber in Inglewood, California
15. A welder runs a seam on a high-pressure boiler in one of the Chattanooga shops of the Combustion Engineering Company
16. A welder joins parts of the body of a halftrac scout car in the converted Eastern plant of a lock and safe manufacturer Diebold Safe and Lock Company in Canton, Ohio
17. A welder working on a Dodge army truck
18. Spot welding on the Shasta Dam in Shasta County, California
19. Floyd Swick, a welder from Newton, Kansas works in the Valley Center oil field near Wichita, Kansas
20. A welder takes a break at the Shasta Dam
21. The structural shop of the Keystone Drilling Company in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania
22. 40th Street weld shop of the C & NW railroad in Chicago
23. A welder works in the round-house at the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad's Proviso yard
24. Welding boilers for a ship in Chattanooga, Tennessee
25. Welders at the Combustion Engineering Co
26. Another shot from the Combustion Engineering Co
27. Boiler fabrication
28. The California Shipbuilding Corporation in Wilmington, California
29. A military welder on the Western front
30. A welder takes a break at the Cherokee Dam, a TVA project
31. A welder of the Ingalls Shipbuilding Company
32. A welder at the Landers, Frary, and Clark plant in Connecticut works on gun mounts for the war
33. A welder poses for a photo on the Arkansas-Texas state line war emergency pipeline
34. A pipeline welder works on the Arkansas-Texas line
35. A welder builds a new steel mill for the Columbia Steel Company in Geneva, Utah
36. Jesse Kermit Lucas takes a break with his apprentice Rodney Gail Chesney while working on the construction of the ship "Booker T. Washington"
37. A welder helps convert the Plymouth Car factory for wartime production in Detroit