The first to discover that chromium maintains steel corrosion resistance was French Pierre Berthier in the year 1821. But at that time, the steels were high in carbon, making the stainless steel very brittle

In 1872, British Woods and Clark received a patent for an iron alloy with 30-35% chromium and 1.5-2% tungsten, which exhibited high corrosion resistance by acids. However, the difficulty of producing low-carbon steel (<0.15%) remained an obstacle to the development of stainless steels. This barrier was overcome in 1893 when German Hans Goldschmidt discovered the aluminothermal deoxidation of steel. Goldsmith's discovery allowed steelmakers to produce steel with a high oxygen content and very low carbon content in their mutants, and then detonate the molten steel by adding metallic aluminum.

At the beginning of the 20th century, French, British, German and American researchers prepared and studied many Fe-Cr-Ni alloys corresponding to today's grades AISI-SAE 300 and AISI-SAE 400. Since 1909 the German company Krupp AG has begun to build ships using chromium and nickel steel.

In 1913, British metallurgist Harry Breary (English, Harry Brearley, 1871-1948) discovered in Sephylt of England martensite stainless steels and proposed their use for cooking utensils. Brailay named the new steels "rustless», which is, "unusual". Shortly afterwards, he gave them the name "stainless", ie "neat" or "unpopular". For this reason, Brelawly is considered to be the inventor of stainless steel.

In 1824 ,Brassie's successor ,William Hatfield, manufactured in the Brown-Firth lab the18% austenitic stainless steel (18% Cr, 8% Ni), which has since been the most Representative and the most widespread stainless steel.