IT’S IN YOUR cutlery drawer, on the operating table, transporting our food and on the Chrysler Building. Stainless steel is such a part of everyday life and famous structures, it’s hard to believe it was only invented 100 years ago.
In 1913, Harry Brearley, a researcher in a lab in Sheffield – where else – in England hit on a method for producing industrialised quantities of a highly durable stainless steel, utterly resistant to rust.
Scientists had been tinkering with forms of stainless steel but this one was not brittle and could suddenly be applied in all sorts of manufacturing situations. Brearley’s ‘Staybrite’ metal became popular in England and in 1915, he teamed up with a New York patent holder Elwood Haynes to form the American Stainless Steel Corporation.
The catchy name we now know the compound by emerged with a trade journal dubbed it “unstainable steel”.
Just look at what we’ve built with it in the 100 years since that breakthrough:
The top of the Chrysler building in New York:
Pic: John Stillwell/PA Archive/Press Association Images
The New York Times trumpeting the mass manufacturing of stainless steel in 1915:
via Wikicommons
The Sibelius monument in Helsinki, Finland:
Pic: Sibelius monument at Shutterstock.com
The DeLorean DMC-12 (manufactured in Belfast) went Back to the Future with its stainless steel panels:
Pic: James Carr/PA Archive/Press Association Images
The Atomium, Brussels in Belgium:
Pic: /Eye Ubiquitous/Press Association Images
The Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia:
Pic: Eye Ubiquitous/Press Association Images
And this small structure in Dublin…
Pic: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland
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