Wednesday, January 19, 2011

INVENTION OF THE WELDING HELMET

(Correction: In our haste to respond to a comment we inadvertently listed Charles E. Bowers, Sr. as the inventor of the welding helmet and the founder of The Fibre-Metal Products Company. We should have listed his father Frederick M. Bowers as the inventor and founder. Charles E. Bowers, Sr. was the President of Fibre-Metal for many years and held more than 45 patents. But his father invented the welding helmet and founded the company.)

Today we received a comment about our "WELDING HELMET" post. The commentor challenged our statement that the "Fibre-Metal Products Company invented the welding helmet". He said that statement is "false" and claimed that William Dinkuhn invented the helmet.

The primary goal of this Forum is to foster a discussion. We welcome comments and respect readers right to challenge anything we say. But this comment was from "Anonymous" with no identification of who he was and no documentation or substantiation of his claim that our information was false. So there is nothing to discuss.

For our regular readers, there is overwhelming documentation and substantiation of the fact that Frederick M. Bowers, the founder of The Fibre-Metal Products Company, invented and produced the first welding helmet in 1905. There are ample records,  dated photographs, extemporaneous comments from others at the time, etc to prove it. Mr. Bowers had his helmet invention patented in 1914 with the patent being approved in 1915. The patent is below.



I have been in the welding helmet business for almost 50 years and with all due respect to Mr. William Dinkuhn, I have never seen nor heard of a "Dinkuhn" helmet. A quick search of the Internet shows just one entry and that was a one line answer to a question on Answers.com, again by "Anonymous" saying that William Dinkuhn invented the welding helmet in 1916. That is a full 11 years after Frederick M. Bowers had invented and was producing welding helmets, and 2 years after Mr. Bowers had received a patent on his invention.

8 comments:

  1. Bob, you are correct, I finally found the details of both patents. Bowers had my great granfather beat by one year. Dinkuhn's Patent was in July of 1910 and his invention differed from Bower's, as it had a shoulder mounted rest for the support of the helmet's weight.

    Thanks for the challange, I cleared up an old family tale!

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  2. Palm Beach Welding
    There may have been some question about who patented their welding helmet design first, but there is no doubt about who invented and produced the first welding helmet and when they did it. Frederick M. Bowers did not patent his helmet until 1914, but he actually invented and produced it in 1905. There is ample documentation to prove that.

    In 1904, Frederick M. Bowers, then employed by the Baldwin Lima Hamilton Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was asked by his employer to build an electric arc welding machine based on drawings obtained from the Krupps Works in Germany who was experimenting with the process. Mr. Bowers built the machine, called a "Barrel Welder" and began to develop the process to repair imperfections in Baldwins large castings. Early on he realized he needed face and eye protection for the process and that was why and when he designed and produced his welding helmet. Mr. Bowers kept a meticulous journal of his work, designs and drawings and there is documentation from the Baldwin company and the trade journals of the time of his work. Because Mr. Bowers is credited with being the first electric arc welder in this country, it is doubtful anyone produced a welding helmet before him. Mr. Bowers also went on to invent the electrode holder, the filter plate, and worked on designing the first gas welding torch along with others.

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  3. The actual idea of the welding helmet belonged to my great great grandfather William Shirmer it was then stolen by his business partner

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    Replies
    1. Mr. Tang:
      There is overwhelming documentation and substantiation of the fact that Frederick M. Bowers, the founder of The Fibre-Metal Products Company, invented and produced the first welding helmet in 1905. There are ample records, dated photographs, extemporaneous comments from others at the time, etc to prove it. Mr. Bowers had his helmet invention patented in 1914 with the patent being approved in 1915.

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  4. Hi Bob! You are right!

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  5. Hi. By any chance do you have the patent number of that first welding helmet, patented by Bowers? The image you posted isn't clear. Thanks!

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  6. Nice post I will Read It again It contains most helpful information for me thanks.
    Welding Hood

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  7. My great great great grandfather is Frederick m. Bowers

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