House was born in 1840, in Brooklyn, New York, where his father practised his profession as an architect. He was the son of Ezekial Newton and Susan (King) House, and nephew of Royal Earl House. A few years after Henry's birth his parents moved to Pennsylvania.
He obtained his primary education and began the study of architecture with his father in Pennsylvania.
When he was seventeen years old he went to Chicago and for two years worked in an architect's office. Late in 1859 the muscles of his right hand were severed in an accident, so that it was impossible for him to continue his architectural work, and he became interested in various inventions. About this time he removed to Brooklyn and was granted his first patent, August 20, 1860, for a partly self-operating farm gate.
With the outbreak of the Civil War and the curtailment of the manufacture and sale of all products except necessities, he turned his attention to sewing machines and, with his brother James, sought to perfect a machine to work button-holes. In this endeavor they were successful, obtaining their first patent (No. 36, 932) for such a contrivance on November 11, 1862. After patenting four improvements in the summer of 1863, the brothers sold them, under a royalty agreement, to the Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut Thereupon they moved to Bridgeport and entered the employ of that company as experimenters and inventors. Here House continued for more than seven years and with his brother devised and sold to their employers forty-five inventions pertaining to the sewing machine. In addition, they designed (1866) a "horseless carriage" equipped with a twin-cylinder, doubleacting, slide-valve steam engine of twelve horsepower, 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 Bridgeport the Armstrong & House Manufacturing Company to produce them. The company continued active for the succeeding twenty years until 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 paper boxes, as well as one for plucking fur.
After 1889 he was not engaged actively in manufacturing, 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, including 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.
He died in Bridgeport.
For one year, 1872, he was a member of the Bridgeport Common Council.
House was married, November 24, 1861, to his cousin, Mary Elizabeth House.
