Steel tubes
Steel tubes are the basic tubing product, and every
improved version quickly becomes, in its turn, basic.
When, in 1897, the British company John Reynolds
developed a process for making butted steel tubes
– thicker at the ends than in the middle – the strong
yet lightweight result was a new staple of bicycle
manufacture.
Corrugated stainless steel tubing (CSST) –
continuous, flexible pipe with an exterior PVC
covering – was a novelty a quarter-century ago.
Now, at least 50 per cent of the new houses in the
US using natural gas for heating or cooking have
CSST installed.
And steel tubes continue to figure prominently in
industrial and aesthetic design. The voiceless organ
pipes that distinguish such interiors as the General
Assembly of the United Nations were inspired by the
mechanical imagery of “basic” steel tubing.
In the world of materials and forms a steel tube is,
in a very basic sense, the gold standard.
