Harry Brearley, the creator of stainless steel (2016)
15 comments
·June 22, 2025adrian_b
pfdietz
> Leading to stainless steel, a first step was the discovery of the method to produce aluminum cheaply, by electrolysis. With cheap aluminum available, a method for producing chromium was discovered, by reducing chromium compounds with metallic aluminum.
Are you sure about that? Chromium is produced (as ferrochrome, a FeCr alloy) by carbothermic reduction of chromite. This is done in an arc furnace, so electrical energy is needed, but no aluminum. Pure chromium (without the iron) is not needed for production of stainless steel.
perihelions
> "algebra (Taylor bought him the book, a gift Harry brought home to show off, and never forgot)"
If anyone was hooked by this tangent, this was[0] "Todhunter’s[1] Algebra" [2] (1858? 1870? 1871? 1889?) you can peruse for free at [2].
[0] https://www.readingsheffield.co.uk/harry-brearleys-reading-j...
gsf_emergency_2
From time to time, I see articles implying the medieval use of chromium, however sparingly, in forging weapons (near east or central Asia)
Eg. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...
vanderZwan
> The range of the mind’s eye is restricted by the skill of the hand. The castles in the air must conform to the possibilities of material things—border-line possibilities perhaps; or, if something beyond the known border is required, the plan must wait until other dreams come true.
That's a quote that surely appeals to many here.
datameta
The full read particularly resonated with me from the perspective of a metaphor to today's rapidly changing engineering practices.
> “Time was,” he lamented later, “when a man made steel, decided what it was good for and told the customer how to make the best of it. Then, with time’s quickening step, he just made the steel; he engaged another man, who knew nothing about steelmaking, to analyse it, and say what it was good for. Then he engaged a second man, who knew all about hardening and tempering steel; then a third man who could neither make steel, nor analyse it, nor harden and temper it—but this last tested it, put his OK mark on it and passed it into service.”
In a way it warms my heart that obfuscation in such a manner, perhaps even enshittification, is not a new experience for those watching a trade modernise. Several things come to mind: npm and python library dependency hell and LLM as a catalyst of skill atrophy in experts simultaneously with the enablement of a whole new middle layer of proprietors.
Also the article led me to think more about the idea of simultaneous invention - I used to believe it to be redundant and wasted work. But this still can lead to different outcomes even with identical formulations or methods. Getting an invention into use in the world is perhaps as great a feat as the invention itself. I now believe any worthwhile invention deserves more than one champion.
In today's hyperconnected world it is easy to discover that someone else has beaten you to the full flourishing of idea into invention, but I find that doing the novel work oneself with one's own mind and hands still provides the unique learning opportunity which can allow one to invent yet again, albeit now with a widened skill and knowledge horizon.
anton-c
As a jewelry maker and guitar player I am gonna enjoy this either way
datameta
And the strings of the guitar are an intersection of both interpretations! There are several core wire alloys used and many different kinds of winding wire to achieve different tone and magnetic response.
Fun fact, a common older winding alloy for acoustic guitars was called 80/20 Bronze despite actually being copper/zinc alloy and therefore Brass!
superfunny
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ReptileMan
First was Bach, then came Wagner, then Yngwie Malmsteen (yeah I know he is boring, but he was probably the one that showed the public this part of the metal lineage the clearest)
CuriouslyC
It would have been more interesting for sure. What is steel before death?
While the invention of stainless steel is one of the most important in history, it should be noted that almost never an invention appears really independently, but almost always it appears as a consequence of a chain of prior inventions, which have been necessary to make it possible.
Leading to stainless steel, a first step was the discovery of the method to produce aluminum cheaply, by electrolysis. With cheap aluminum available, a method for producing chromium was discovered, by reducing chromium compounds with metallic aluminum.
With metallic chromium easily available, after a century from its discovery, during which making metallic chromium had been impossible in great quantities, it has become possible to investigate the properties of the chromium alloys with the other available metals.
Soon, it has been discovered that chromium can produce interesting alloys with cobalt ("stellite") and with nickel, and that these alloys are the first metals that can rival the platinum-group metals in chemical resistance.
It has been suggested that these chromium alloys could be used for stainless cutlery, but the high prices of cobalt and nickel have prevented the use of such alloys, except for special applications where the cost was unimportant.
More than a decade later, the next logical step has been the discovery that the expensive cobalt and nickel can be substituted with cheap iron, without diminishing much the chemical resistance of the alloys.
It should also be noted that while Brearley has invented the ferritic stainless steel, which has only small amounts of any other elements besides iron and chromium, almost simultaneously a different kind of stainless steel has been invented in Germany, austenitic stainless steel, which also has significant amounts of nickel, besides iron and chromium, with enough nickel to change the crystal structure of the steel.
Austenitic stainless steels have various advantages, especially that they are much more suitable to cheap processing by plastic deformation, so nowadays they are much more widely used than the kind of stainless steel invented by Brearley.