page_title: Harry Brearley
section_title: The discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Harry Brearley / Stainless steel / The discovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Source: NY Times from January 31, 1915, as retrieved from http://firstmention.com/stainlesssteel.aspx Source: NY Times from January 31, 1915, as retrieved from http://firstmention.com/stainlesssteel.aspx
context_page_description: Harry Brearley was an English metallurgist who invented stainless steel, that is, steel which does not rust.
context_section_description: In order to do examine the alloys, a metal sample is treated. For a carbon steel, a dilute solution of nitric acid in alcohol is sufficient to produce the required effect. Brearley found that the new chromium steels were very resistant to chemical attack.
  Up to that time carbon-steel knives rusted if they were not polished. Only expensive sterling silver or EPNS cutlery avoided the problem. With this in mind, Brearley tested his chromiun steel with food acids such as vinegar and lemon juice. The results were very promising.
  At first, Brearley called the new alloy "rustless steel". The better-sounding "stainless steel" was suggested by Ernest Stuart, a local cutlery manufacturer.
  The first true stainless steel, a 0.24wt% C, 12.8wt% Cr ferrous alloy, was produced by Brearley in an electric furnace on 13 August 1913. He was subsequently awarded the Iron and Steel Institute's Bessemer Gold Medal in 1920.  The American Society for Metals gives the date for Brearley's creation of casting number 1008 (12.8% chromium, 0.44% manganese, 0.2% silicon, 0.24% carbon and 85.32% iron) as 20 August 1913.
  Almost all research projects into stainless steels were interrupted by the 1914–18 War. The work was taken up again in the 1920s. Brearley had left the Brown Firth Laboratories in 1915, but the research continued under the direction of his successor, Dr. W. H. Hatfield. It is Hatfield who is credited with the development, in 1924, of a stainless steel which even today is probably the widest-used alloy of this type, the so-called "18/8", which in addition to chromium, includes nickel (Ni) in its composition (18wt% Cr, 8wt% Ni).
caption: Announcement of Brearley's stainless steel discovery as it appeared in the 1915 New York Times.[3]
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