Harry Brearley who was an English metallurgist, was heading England’s Brown Firth Research Lab in Sheffield in the year 1908, at the age of 36. In the year 1912, the lab was commissioned to find out ways so as to eliminate the erosion in gun barrels. Brearley spent months researching the given objective but to no avail. Many months later, he noticed one of the samples of the gun eroded material that he scrapped, still had its lustre intact while all the others rusted. This particular sample exhibited high levels of chromium, which caused its resistance to the corrosion. Chromium, as we know, is the main component in stainless steel. Thus Harry Brearley accidentally caused the invention of stainless steel. This discovery was, however, announced 2 years later in the newspaper, ‘The New York Times’. The new founded metal was marketed under the brand Staybrite by Firth Vickers in England.
Stainless Steel
