Welding & Automation, Inc. was founded in 1952 as “The Hanson Engineering Company”. It was the brainchild of Howard Swenson, who then was chief welding engineer with the Metals and Controls division of Texas instruments in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Mr. Swenson’s farther in-law provided financing for the startup company. In gratitude, the firm was named after ifs benefactor, “Mr. Hanson”.

The motivation for “The Hanson Engineering Company” was to provide precision welding equipment to the industrial market place. Mr. Swenson was dissatisfied with the quality of standard resistance welding machinery available at that time and sought to bring to the resistance welding world, the proverbial “better mousetrap”. Howard had a clear understanding of the processing requirements for precision resistance welding as a result of his years at Texas Instruments. He proceeded to develop and market a line of precision welding machines that included weld heads, transformers, and controls. Those machines were successfully used in applications previously thought impossible for the resistance welding process. Many of Howard's original design concepts are still used in equipment we manufacture today.