Royal Earl was born in Rockland, Vt. in 1814. He was 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.
Education
He obtained his whole elementary education from their mother.
Career
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 August 12, 1839, secured a patent (No. 1284) for a machine to saw barrel staves.
With the intention 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 interested 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 structures 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 different 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 demonstration House secured the necessary funds to perfect his device. He worked on it continuously for two years and finally, April 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 printing telegraph was erected from New York to Boston and Washington, and west to Cleveland and Cincinnati, and operated with great commercial 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 telegraphic communication between New York and Philadelphia. He also designed a glass screw socket insulator and the machine to make it. In 1849 he was sued for infringement by the owners of the Morse patents and won the suit (see Scientific American, October 26, November 2, 1850). After the general consolidation of competitive telegraphic interests took place, around 1850, House's apparatus gradually went out of use.
In the early fifties House settled in Binghamton, N. Y. , where he resided for many years, continuing his experimental work in electricity and patenting many of his devices. In 1885 he removed to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he passed the remainder of his days.
Achievements
Connections
He was married in New York City, in 1846, to Theresa Thomas of Buffalo, N. Y. , and was survived by an adopted daughter. Henry Alonzo House was his nephew.