1.0. Historical Overview

Prior to 1812 pipe and tubing for various uses was hand-made from wrought-iron plate by heating, bending, lapping and hammering the edges together. In 1812 an Englishman named Osborne invented machines to do much the same thing in a process known as “hammer lap-welding”. Later, in 1824 and 1825 came the process known as butt welding or furnace butt welding. Still later followed the development of continuous lap welding in the 1840's. The first extruded wrought-iron seamless tubing appeared in the 1836 with improvements arising in 1840 and 1845. It remained a costly process, however, and seamless tubing was little-used until the invention of rotary piercing in 1886. The invention of the Bessemer process for making steel in 1856 made possible the first butt-welded and lap-welded steel pipe in 1887. By 1900 most pipe was made from steel by either butt welding (1/8 to 4-inch diameter) or lap welding (2 to 12-inch diameter).