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.
dmurray · 37m ago
> 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
Nickel and cobalt don't seem prohibitively expensive for cutlery, around $15,000 [0] per ton and $33,000 [1] per ton respectively. By comparison, chromium is around $10,000 and iron is essentially free.
Even if the optimal ratio is 100% cobalt, that might add $1.50 to the price of a dinner fork or $50 to a cutlery set that will last a lifetime.
Walmart might not stock it, but that seems completely within the range of what you could charge for a premium product, if the nickel-cobalt-chromium alloys really do make for superior cutlery. Maybe it's less suitable for other reasons than cost.
> 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.
hinkley · 3h ago
> Chromium is produced
Brearley steel debuted in 1915. The question is not how it is produced in 2025 but how it was produced in 1915.
Wikipedia partly agrees with GP:
“Also in the late 1890s, German chemist Hans Goldschmidt developed an aluminothermic (thermite) process for producing carbon-free chromium.[29] Between 1904 and 1911, several researchers, particularly Leon Guillet of France, prepared alloys that would later be considered stainless steel.[29][30]”
Though it points out a host of household names that knew of iron chrome alloys, including Faraday and Bunsen. Chrome steel existed for 75 years before Brearley came along but seems to have been used for things like canons, which are a lot more dear than cutlery. I wonder how they got their chrome 50 years before Goldschmidt.
pfdietz · 2h ago
Ferrochrome was first produced in electric arc furnaces in 1893, two decades before stainless steel.
adrian_b · 2h ago
The first ferrochrome produced thus had very high carbon content.
The only kind of stainless steel that could have had any chances of being made with such a ferrochrome would have been a martensitic stainless steel for knife blades.
In any case that kind of ferrochrome was not suitable for researching the properties of chromium alloys. The acceptable compositions for alloys like stellite or various kinds of stainless steels have all been discovered, after many experiments, only by using relatively pure aluminothermic chromium, which was a strictly necessary ingredient for enabling chromium alloy research.
Only after the required composition of a kind of stainless steel was understood and only if it was determined that such a composition can be reached by mixing ferrochrome with iron, the manufacturing process was adjusted for using cheaper ferrochrome instead of pure chromium.
Today there exists low-carbon ferrochrome, which is suitable for making most kinds of stainless steels, but even now the low-carbon ferrochrome is much more expensive than the high-carbon ferrochrome from which only martensitic stainless steel can be made.
Retric · 2h ago
Chromite was mined in the US back in 1811.
Ferrochrome is used to make Chrome steel and later stainless steel, but Chrome steel is significantly older.
adrian_b · 2h ago
The kinds of chrome steel used in the 19th century were very fragile, due to high content of carbon and of other impurities.
Their possible uses were very limited in comparison with the ductile stainless steels discovered in the 20th century.
Also the chemical resistance of the first chrome steels was modest, because it was not known which is the minimum content of chromium for avoiding rusting and also their composition was not well controlled.
perihelions · 7h ago
> "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].
The Timothy Hutton shows available on YouTube are a good introduction if you can get over the poor transcription to youtube.
LgWoodenBadger · 2h ago
IMO, Stick with the books please. The tv series you mention mischaracterizes everyone.
vanderZwan · 7h ago
> 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.
legitster · 1h ago
> That Brearley is credited with discovering stainless steel is due mostly to luck; that he is credited with fathering it is due mostly to his resolve.
It's interesting that most times I have heard these stories growing up the "discovery" aspect was always emphasized - some retelling even framed them as "accidents". Forgetting the parts where the person in question had dedicated a lifetime of study in pursuit of the finding.
gsf_emergency_2 · 4h ago
From time to time, I see articles implying the medieval use of chromium, however sparingly, in forging weapons (near east or central Asia)
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.
hinkley · 3h ago
Sometime around 1993 I was bored and picked up a Reader’s Digest my parents had lying around. In it was an article about how the oil fires Saddam set in Iraq were put out in about a quarter of the time the crews estimated.
Volunteer oil well firefighters from a host of first world and some developing countries showed up and started trying to work together.
The intense heat makes for slow going, and can melt not just people but also equipment. It turned out every country had solved a different part of the problem. The Russians used thermal mass - they attached the hose to the barrel of a tank and let the armor soak up heat for a while. Someone else had better heat shielding. The Americans (?) had perfected detonation to extinguish rather than ignite a fire. And someone had better protective gear.
All of these techniques could be combined. Heat shielding on a tank means the machines you can get the equipment closer to the fire for longer, and the suits and explosives put the fire out faster so the capping crew can get in there.
In the end they were doing several wells per day and multiple sites per week, instead of a few wells per week. Parallel invention doesn’t always end up at the exact same outcome.
datameta · 3h ago
I love this example! The unforeseen synergies of different methods attempting the same outcome cannot be overstated enough in my opinion. Each strategy has its own diminishing returns, and stacking them covers gaps each has.
I think a great illustration of this today are SLaM methods that almost always seem to combine a low-drift high-noise technique with one that is high-drift and low-noise.
hinkley · 1h ago
I think where parallel discovery really shines is in operational excellence. Your best people have high tolerances for certain aspects of the work, the craft, and low tolerances for others. But to industrialize it needs to be accessible to tens of thousands, and they don’t have time for this shit.
I expect that was a lot of the speed up. You can’t do eight wells a week if every well exhausts your team. Better working conditions mean faster cycling. Hell I bet whoever brought the best “Gatorade”, masseuse, and entertainment deserves more credit than they ever got.
pfdietz · 3h ago
> perhaps even enshittification
This is rather silly, since steel today is far superior to the steel of his day. The complexity he bemoans is part of that process of improvement.
datameta · 3h ago
I did not mean to imply that steel quality has in any way continued to suffer. He was talking about the process of the early 20st century in comparison to the late 19th when steelmaking was handled more end-to-end from maker to user.
I am talking about enshittification of digital applications and services compared to the earlier years of the information age.
xeonmc · 2h ago
The transitory enshittified steel subsided once scientific formalization of their requirements emerged. I wonder if the transition period of vibe-coded slop will eventually be supplanted with formal-verification that supersede even the quality of cottage codesmanship, or would it forever remain in snakeoil-ridden limbo due to unspecifiability of software taste unlike that of a material’s mechanical performance?
unixhero · 1h ago
But it isn't always stainless!
anton-c · 7h ago
As a jewelry maker and guitar player I am gonna enjoy this either way
datameta · 4h ago
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!
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.
Nickel and cobalt don't seem prohibitively expensive for cutlery, around $15,000 [0] per ton and $33,000 [1] per ton respectively. By comparison, chromium is around $10,000 and iron is essentially free.
Even if the optimal ratio is 100% cobalt, that might add $1.50 to the price of a dinner fork or $50 to a cutlery set that will last a lifetime.
Walmart might not stock it, but that seems completely within the range of what you could charge for a premium product, if the nickel-cobalt-chromium alloys really do make for superior cutlery. Maybe it's less suitable for other reasons than cost.
[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/nickel
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cobalt
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.
Brearley steel debuted in 1915. The question is not how it is produced in 2025 but how it was produced in 1915.
Wikipedia partly agrees with GP:
“Also in the late 1890s, German chemist Hans Goldschmidt developed an aluminothermic (thermite) process for producing carbon-free chromium.[29] Between 1904 and 1911, several researchers, particularly Leon Guillet of France, prepared alloys that would later be considered stainless steel.[29][30]”
Though it points out a host of household names that knew of iron chrome alloys, including Faraday and Bunsen. Chrome steel existed for 75 years before Brearley came along but seems to have been used for things like canons, which are a lot more dear than cutlery. I wonder how they got their chrome 50 years before Goldschmidt.
The only kind of stainless steel that could have had any chances of being made with such a ferrochrome would have been a martensitic stainless steel for knife blades.
In any case that kind of ferrochrome was not suitable for researching the properties of chromium alloys. The acceptable compositions for alloys like stellite or various kinds of stainless steels have all been discovered, after many experiments, only by using relatively pure aluminothermic chromium, which was a strictly necessary ingredient for enabling chromium alloy research.
Only after the required composition of a kind of stainless steel was understood and only if it was determined that such a composition can be reached by mixing ferrochrome with iron, the manufacturing process was adjusted for using cheaper ferrochrome instead of pure chromium.
Today there exists low-carbon ferrochrome, which is suitable for making most kinds of stainless steels, but even now the low-carbon ferrochrome is much more expensive than the high-carbon ferrochrome from which only martensitic stainless steel can be made.
Ferrochrome is used to make Chrome steel and later stainless steel, but Chrome steel is significantly older.
Their possible uses were very limited in comparison with the ductile stainless steels discovered in the 20th century.
Also the chemical resistance of the first chrome steels was modest, because it was not known which is the minimum content of chromium for avoiding rusting and also their composition was not well controlled.
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...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Todhunter
[2] https://archive.org/details/algebraforuseofc00todhuoft
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Stout
The Timothy Hutton shows available on YouTube are a good introduction if you can get over the poor transcription to youtube.
That's a quote that surely appeals to many here.
It's interesting that most times I have heard these stories growing up the "discovery" aspect was always emphasized - some retelling even framed them as "accidents". Forgetting the parts where the person in question had dedicated a lifetime of study in pursuit of the finding.
Eg. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...
> “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.
Volunteer oil well firefighters from a host of first world and some developing countries showed up and started trying to work together.
The intense heat makes for slow going, and can melt not just people but also equipment. It turned out every country had solved a different part of the problem. The Russians used thermal mass - they attached the hose to the barrel of a tank and let the armor soak up heat for a while. Someone else had better heat shielding. The Americans (?) had perfected detonation to extinguish rather than ignite a fire. And someone had better protective gear.
All of these techniques could be combined. Heat shielding on a tank means the machines you can get the equipment closer to the fire for longer, and the suits and explosives put the fire out faster so the capping crew can get in there.
In the end they were doing several wells per day and multiple sites per week, instead of a few wells per week. Parallel invention doesn’t always end up at the exact same outcome.
I think a great illustration of this today are SLaM methods that almost always seem to combine a low-drift high-noise technique with one that is high-drift and low-noise.
I expect that was a lot of the speed up. You can’t do eight wells a week if every well exhausts your team. Better working conditions mean faster cycling. Hell I bet whoever brought the best “Gatorade”, masseuse, and entertainment deserves more credit than they ever got.
This is rather silly, since steel today is far superior to the steel of his day. The complexity he bemoans is part of that process of improvement.
I am talking about enshittification of digital applications and services compared to the earlier years of the information age.
Fun fact, a common older winding alloy for acoustic guitars was called 80/20 Bronze despite actually being copper/zinc alloy and therefore Brass!