House

outbreak of the Civil War and the curtailment of
the manufacture and sale of all products except
necessities, he turned his attention to sewing ma-
chines and, with his brother James, sought to per-
fect a machine to work button-holes. In this en-
deavor they were successful, obtaining their first
patent (No. 36,932) for such a contrivance on
Nov. n, 1862. After patenting four improve-
ments in the summer of 1863, the brothers sold
them, under a royalty agreement, to the Wheeler
& Wilson Sewing Machine Company of Bridge-
port, Conn. Thereupon they moved to Bridgeport
and entered the employ of that company as exper-
imenters and inventors. Here House continued
for more than seven years and with his brother
devised and sold to their employers forty-five in-
ventions pertaining to the sewing machine. In
addition, they designed (1866) a "horseless car-
riage" equipped with a twin-cylinder, double-
acting, slide-valve steam engine of twelve horse-
power, which, using friction drive, propelled the
carriage at a speed of about thirty miles an hour.
In 1867 House and his brother were at the Paris
Exposition, where they demonstrated all of the
Wheeler & Wilson products, including their
own button-hole machines, and were awarded
gold medals for their inventions. House had also
patented a number of other devices and in 1869,
resigning his position, he organized at Bridge-
port the Armstrong & House Manufacturing
Company to produce them. The company con-
tinued active for the succeeding twenty years un-
til its shops were destroyed by fire. During this
time all kinds of knitting machinery were made
and sold; also a contrivance for automatically
bundling kindling wood, which House devised in
1872; and a machine for making compressed pa-
per boxes, as well as one for plucking fur. After
1889 he was not engaged actively in manufac-
turing, but continued to indulge his inventive
genius; he also developed a consulting practice.
In this capacity he was associated with Hiram
and Percy Maxim in England in many of their
technologic experiments and inventions, includ-
ing the building of the Maxim steam-propelled
flying machine of 1896. For the last thirty years
of his life he carried on his inventive work in his
home laboratory, and, at the time of his death,
he had to his credit more than three hundred
patents covering a wide range. For one year,
1872, he was a member of the Bridgeport Com-
mon Council. House was married, Nov. 24,1861,
to his cousin, Mary Elizabeth House. He died
in Bridgeport, survived by a son and two daugh-
ters.

{.Bridgeport Times Star, Dec. 18,1930 ; N. Y> Times,
Dec. 19, 1930; Bridgeport Post, April 29, 1928, May
?8, 1930, June 14, 1930; correspondence with Mr.

House

House in 1929; information as to certain facts from
Miss Rose E. House, Bridgeport.] C W.M,

HOUSE, ROYAL EARL (Sept. 9, i8i4-Feb.
2S> J895), inventor, was born in Rockland, Vt,
the son of James N. and Hepsibah (Newton)
House. While he was still an infant his parents
moved to Little Meadows, Susquehanna County,
Pa,, then virgin country, and here House and his
two brothers grew up, obtaining their whole ele-
mentary education from their mother. House
showed a decided preference for mechanics and
science at an early age and while still in his teens
devised a submerged water wheel of the type
now known as the "scroll wheel." As far as can
be determined, he remained at home until he was
twenty-five years old, always experimenting, and
on Aug. 12, 1839, secured a patent (No. 1284)
for a machine to saw barrel staves. With the in-
tention of studying law, he went about 1840 to
live with a relative in Buffalo, N. Y. He had
been there but a short time when through several
books on natural philosophy he became so inter-
ested in the subject of electricity that he gave up
all thought of law and returned to his home to
undertake electrical experiments. For some four
years, 1840-44, he concentrated his effort upon
the production of an electric-telegraph record in
printed Roman characters. He possessed the
unusual capacity of designing mechanical struc-
tures without setting them forth in drawings, and
when, early in 1844, the various parts of his
printing telegraph had been formulated in his
mind, he proceeded to New York to have them
constructed. They were made in several dif-
ferent establishments, assembled by House, and
in the autumn of 1844, at the American Institute
Fair in New York, first exhibited as a printing
telegraph in operation. Through this demonstra-
tion House secured the necessary funds to perfect
his device* He worked on it continuously for
two years and finally, Apr. 18, 1846, obtained
patent No. 4464, As improved, the instrument
was capable of printing messages at the rate of
more than fifty words a minute. Again House
was successful in interesting capital, with the
result that between 1847 and 1855 an extensive
range of telegraph lines equipped with his print-
ing telegraph was erected from New York to
Boston and Washington, and west to Cleveland
and Cincinnati, and operated with great com-
mercial success. House himself had much to do
with the construction and installation of the lines.
He was the first to employ stranded wire. He
succeeded in spanning the Hudson River at Fort
Lee in 1849 and thus established permanent tele-
graphic communication between New York and
Philadelphia. He also designed a glass screw

259