Henry Alonzo House Inventions Information

Henry Alonzo House (April 23, 1840 – December 18, 1930) was an American inventor who developed machinery and processes that have had a lasting impact on several industries.

House was born in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest son of Ezekiel House, an architect and builder, and Susannah King. His father was an architect and builder, and at that time was assisting his brother Royal Earl House in perfecting and getting capital interest in his New Printing Telegraph.

In the spring of 1846 the House family moved to Little Meadows, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where they built a home on the side of a hill which was known as the Castle. There was a natural spring nearby, which was piped into the house to give running water, an unusual thing for those days. At that time there was no railroad to that part of the country, so in order to move their household goods from New York, they boarded a barge which was towed by steam up the Hudson River to Troy where it was taken through the lock into the Erie Canal and towed by horses to Ithaca on Lake Cayuga, New York. The last part of the trip was made by ox teams and the whole journey took over a month.

In 1852 the family moved to Owego, New York where there were better educational facilities. Here they lived by the Susquehanna River. The boys James and Henry built a boat and rigged it up like the side wheelers they had seen on the Hudson River. This they used to take people up the river on excursions and also to carry produce down the river, thus earning money with which to pay their father for the material used to build the boat.

Ezekiel House left Owego in the spring of 1854 as he had taken a contract to build a county court house in the suburbs of Rockford, Illinois. Henry and his brother went to Rockford in the fall and started in business with their father. In 1857 Henry took a position with his father who was superintending the raising and reconstructing of the old city hall in Chicago. While working on a building in New York, Henry had the misfortune of having the extension muscle of his right hand severed by a chisel which dropped from a scaffold. This incapacitated his doing any carpentry work for several months. During this enforced idleness, he designed and patented an automatic gate.

When the Civil War broke out and Henry was rejected as a volunteer on account of his slightly cripped right hand, he turned his attention to making a button hole machine. He and his brother James entered into partnership with Mr. Seaman and in 1862 they perfected an automatic buttonhole sewing machine. It was then tested in a clothing shop in New York on army overcoats and capes, where its average was from 1,000 to 1,200 buttonholes per day. This caused hard feelings among the hand buttonhole workers, and one day during the noon hour they smashed the machine. However, the next morning another machine was working in its place. All together there were over one hundred thousand button holes made there. The patents were taken over by the Wheeler and Wilson Manufacturing Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. While House was in Washington D.C. looking after the patent application, he met Abraham Lincoln, for whom he cast his first vote.

In November 1862, he again returned to Little Meadows and married his cousin Mary Elizabeth House, daughter of William House, a miller. As his mother was very ill they hurried to Brooklyn where his mother died on November 28, 1862.

He then took his bride to Bridgeport, Connecticut where he was engaged by Wheeler and Wilson to superintend the making of his buttonhole machine. In the Spring of 1863 his father Ezekiel House died in Brooklyn. During that year four patents were issued for the automatic buttonhole sewing machine. In 1867 House represented the company at the Paris Exposition Universelle, which opened in France in May 1867.

In 1864 his shop was moved from Brooklyn to Bridgeport, with his brother James joining him there. They soon perfected an attachment to be used on the family sewing machine. This system was entirely new and since the patent was issued in 1868, it has been adopted throughout the world. On February 27, 1865, Henry Alonzo House Jr. was born. Another son, William Ezekiel, was born on February 22, 1874. On November 21, 1875, a daughter, Libbie Grace, was born.

In the spring of 1866, Henry House, Sr. and his brother James built a steam carriage for their own amusement and recreation. It carried seven, including the driver and the fireman on the back seat. It developed 15 hp and could travel 30 mph on a good level road. It frightened so many horses and even men, so they did not use it long.

House left Wheeler and Wilson in 1869 and turned his attention to developing a machine that could knit various-sized goods, both flat and tubular. At the time, there were no machines on the market doing that type of work. In 1870, the Armstrong and House Manufacturing Company was organized and a shop was built to produce the new knitting machines. Five patents were issued to House from 1869 to 1872, among them was one for a new system of knitting stockings in a continuous tube. The process would first knit the leg, then form a mitered heal, then the foot and mitered toe then a leg, and so on. The toe was then separated from the leg by drawing a thread leaving all the loops ready to close.

House resigned from Armstrong and House in the fall of 1872, and proceeded to invent a bundling machine for kindling wood in 1873.

In 1875 his attention was called to the dressing of fur skins, such as buffalo hides. Using existing processes, it took from two to two and a half days of hard labor to bring a large hide down to a flexiable state. When House claimed that he could make a machine that could dress four hides or more a day, they were astonished, as they claimed no tool could stand up to those dry hides for even ten minutes. To meet the challenge, House developed a rotary plane with a ring knife that could be fed as it moved, with a set of small emery wheels each side of the knife so that it was sharpened on every revolution. The plane was universally hung and counterbalanced so it weighed nothing in the hand of the operator, though it was driven by power from the engine. On a wager, the first operator finished fifty hides in ten hours.

In 1878, the president of the Union Paper Bag Co. of Philadelphia called on House, as he had heard that House had developed a machine that was able to make sachel-bottom paper bags. House came up with a folding attachment for their old machines, and although this was satisfactory to a degree, the machines were still old, and were not properly constructed. House then designed new machines.

While working the attachment in Philadelphia, House was asked if he could help one of Union's western branches in making the paper dishes, as they had trouble in drying them. When House produced samples with a round flange, the design was accepted and he was given a contract to build a machine that would make twenty thousand paper dishes in 10 hours. Much work was required to maintain the heat at 800 to 900 degrees, which was necessary to dry a dish in two (2) seconds. Mr. House involved a system of using superheated steam which kept the dies at red heat. The press was first tested at his factory in Bridgeport before being shipped to Clinton, Iowa.

Late in 1878, in collaboration with hatter Dwight Wheeler, House invented and patented a machine for blocking felt hats in 28 seconds. The patents were issued on February 25, 1879 and in the same year the House and Wheeler Hat Flanging Co., a joint stock company, was formed in Bridgeport. A practical machine was built and installed at the Marrinet Hat Co. at Salisbury, Connecticut. The employees, adverse to any innovations that might reduce their value to the company, went on strike. The hat flanging machine fulfilled all requirements, and after the machine had been working a few months the strikers were ready to compromise. In later years the Hatters Union voted against its use entirely.

In October 1878, House suffered a severe shock from the accidental death of his younger son, William Ezekiel House, who was accidentally shot and killed by his cousin, Alfred Bishop Beers, Jr.

In 1880, S.D. Castle and Henry House became interested in the picking of furs. Buffalo hides were getting scarce, and Castle wanted to use muskrat or beaver, but he found the pelts had to be picked of the outer long hair, a tedious job for an unskilled hand. After a few months, House had a small machine working that would pick large or small pelts without missing a hair. The machine-picked skins were shown to furriers in New York. A few days later, a Mr. Frasure of Wall Street, New York, called on House at Bridgeport, and the two reached an agreement for House to develop a machine that would pick a bull pelt six feet long and three feet wide, while being kept moist and warm. This patent, also the first of its kind, for treating pelts, was issued on October 19, 1882 just one month and five days after the application was made.

Work on the large machine for the London Co. was finished in the spring of 1882. The pelts, after being moistened, went around on a drum which was kept warm with the circulation of hot water. Frasure was more than satisfied and was anxious to ship it to London, England. as soon as possible. Passage for House was booked on the S.S. Adriatic of the White Star Line for the middle of June.

Several weeks of delays after his arrival, the demonstration was performed in secret one Saturday afternoon. In three hours, more work was accomplished than one skilled workman could do in two days. The London Co. bought all the patents pertaining to fur picking and treating of pelts. Everything was boxed and shipped to London in 30 days. Ironically, these machines were never unpacked, leaving the entire control of the fur picking trade with the English market.

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