HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Twenty years ago, it was a revolutionary idea for welding metal together. Ten years later, it was critical technology for America's space shuttle. Today, the technology called ...

Here's a manufacturing challenge: attach a flat gold-plated copper connector to a massive gold-plated copper bus. The obvious approach, mechanical fasteners, tend to be costly and unreliable.

Humans have been welding at least since the advent of the first horseshoes and wagon wheels. Back then, the village blacksmith didn't have screw threads or Cherry rivets, electricity or gas. For those ...