Nissen hut

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The Nissen hut is a prefabricated shelter that consists of a sheet of corrugated steel bent into half a cylinder and planted in the ground with its axis horizontal. The semicircular ends are closed with masonry walls. It was developed for the British military by Peter Norman Nissen, a Canadian mining engineer, in 1916, and used extensively during the Second World War by both the Commonwealth and U.S. military to facilitate the construction of hundreds of new installations.

The Quonset hut, based on the Nissen hut, was developed by the US Navy in World War 2.

[edit] Transport and storage

Because the curved sheets can be cupped one inside another, the space needed to transport or store several hundred curved sheets is little more than the space needed to store one sheet.

[edit] Earthquake

Because the Nissen hut has no weak right-angle bends between walls, roof and ground, its circular shape is good at withstanding earthquakes (see earthquake construction).

[edit] See also

Image of a World War II USAAF Nissen Hut

Nice Nissen hut pictured at nissenhut.com.

Nissen hut in Port Lincoln, South Australia, in the process of being converted into the John Calvin Presbyterian Church, in the early 1950s. Demolished late 1960s.