*no cluster — historical origin story*

Etymology of "welding arc" — Davy pulled apart electrodes powered by Volta's pile and observed the luminous arch.

The two most widely used welding codes in the world are the ASME code, which some people call the granddaddy code — it had its 100th anniversary about five or six years ago. It was kind of the first welding code. Arc welding didn't start until the 1880s — actually it was invented in 1806 or so by Sir Humphry Davy, who was using Volta's piles, as they called them, but they were batteries. They were a research thing. Alessandro Volta had developed this electrochemical cell which he called a pile, P-I-L-E, because it was a pile of plates. Sir Humphry Davy had this and he was studying arcs. In fact, he called it an arc because he had two electrodes which he placed together and he pulled them apart, and it formed an arch. That's where the word welding arc comes from.