Cornelius Whitehouse (22 July 1795 – 7 August 1883) was an English engineer, businessman and inventor of a method of manufacturing tubes cheaply and accurately.
Tubes were made by heating a strip of iron (a skelp), the sides of which were overlapped and hammered to form a weld.
Whitehouse in 1824 and 1825 developed a less labour-intensive method, in which a strip, drawn from the furnace by a chain, passed through a pair of semi-circular dies.
[1] An obituarist wrote in 1883 in The Engineer: "The invention was of the greatest importance, and may be said to have laid the foundation of the welded tube trade.
[1] The obituarist in The Engineer commented: "... the benefits Mr Whitehouse conferred upon all countries through his invention did not leave his latter days with such substantial means as the importance of the industry he created ought to have afforded him.