The History of Steel

The first person to discover that chromium makes steel resistant to corrosion was Frenchman Pierre Berthier in the year 1821. But at that time, steels had a high content of carbon, which made stainless steel very brittle.

In 1872, the British Woods and Clark received a patent for alloy iron with 30–35% chromium and 1.5–2% tungsten, which is highly resistant to acid corrosion. However, the difficulty of producing steel with a low carbon content (< 0.15%) remained an obstacle to the development of stainless steels. This obstacle was overcome in 1893, when German Hans Goldschmidt discovered the aluminothermic reduction of steel. Translated with DeepL.com (free version) Goldsmith's discovery enabled steel mills to produce steel with a high content of oxygen and very low in carbon, and then deoxidize the molten steel by adding metallic aluminum to deoxidize the molten steel.

In the early 20th century, the French, British, German and American researchers prepared and studied many Fe-Cr-Ni alloys corresponding to the current AISI-SAE 300 and AISI-SAE 400 grades. Since 1909, the German company Krupp AG began building ships using steels containing chromium and nickel.

The 1913, the British metallurgist Harry Brearley (English, Harry Brearley, 1871–1948) discovered in Sheffield, England and proposed their use in the manufacture of cookware. Brewster named the new steels "rustless," meaning "rust-free." Shortly thereafter, he gave them the name "stainless," meaning "spotless" or "blemish-free." For this reason, Brearley is considered the inventor of stainless steel.

Brewley's successor at the Brown-Firth laboratory, William Hatfield (English, W. H. Hatfield) developed 1924 the austenitic stainless steel 18/8 (18% Cr, 8% Ni), which has since remained the most representative and widely used stainless steel.