Two Soviet scientists, B. R. Lazarenko and N. I. Lazarenko, were tasked in 1943 to investigate ways of preventing the erosion of tungsten electrical contacts due to sparking. They failed in this task but found that the erosion was more precisely controlled if the electrodes were immersed in a dielectric fluid.
Simultaneously but independently, an American team, Harold Stark, Victor Harding, and Jack Beaver, developed an EDM machine for removing broken drills and taps from aluminium castings.
The wire cut type of machine arose in the 1960s for making tools (dies) from hardened steel. The tool electrode in Wire Cut EDM is simply a wire. To avoid the erosion of the wire causing it to break, the wire is wound between two spools so that the active part of the wire is constantly changing. The earliest numerical controlled (NC) machines were conversions of punched-tape vertical milling machines. The first commercially available NC machine built as a Wire Cut EDM machine was manufactured in the USSR in 1967. Machines that could optically follow lines on a master drawing were developed by David H. Dulebohn's group in the 1960s at Andrew Engineering Company for milling and grinding machines. Master drawings were later produced by computer numerical controlled (CNC) plotters for greater accuracy. A wire cut EDM machine using the CNC drawing plotter and optical line follower techniques was produced in 1974. Dulebohn later used the same plotter CNC program to directly control the EDM machine, and the first CNC EDM machine was produced in 1976.
Commercial wire EDM capability and use has advanced substantially during recent decades. Feed rates have increased and surface finish can be finely controlled.