Notable Steel Pipe Installations [with Discussion]

PIPE dates back to the bamboo pole and hollow log and to the pottery and lead tubes of the Egyptians and Romans. Iron, although used to a limited extent in cast form, could not be economically employed until the development of a practical process for the manufacture of welded wrought-iron pipe early in the nineteenth century. In 1812 machinery was invented in England for welding barrels for firearms and other cylindrical articles. Three years later William Murdock, a Scot, employed old musket barrels discarded after the Napoleonic wars to make gas pipe to light some of the gloomy streets of London. In 1824 James Russell, an Englishman, invented a process for the welding of tubes, with or without a mandrel, by a combination of tilt hammer and roll-