Talk:Harry Brearley

I'd like to propose the following text for an article on Brearley 200.216.87.210 21:47, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC) - sorry, I wasn't logged-in. Wikityke 21:49, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Harry Brearley, the inventor of “rustless” (later to be called “stainless”) steel was born in Sheffield, England in 1871. Brearley had humble beginnings as the son of a steel melter, and he left school at the age of twelve to enter his first employment, as a labourer in one of the city's steelworks, and soon afterwards as a general assistant in the company's chemical laboratory.

For several years, in addition to his laboratory work, he studied at home and later in formal evening classes, to specialize in steel production techniques and associated chemical analysis methods.

By his early thirties, Brearly had earned a reputation as an experienced professional and for being very astute in the resolution of practical, industrial, metallurgical problems. It was in 1908, when two of Sheffield’s principal steelmaking companies innovatively agreed to jointly finance a common research laboratory (Brown Firth Laboratories) that Harry Brearly was asked to lead the project.

In the troubled years immediately before the First World War, arms manufacturing increased significantly in England, but practical problems were encountered due to excessive erosion of the internal surfaces of gun barrels. Brearly began to research new steels which could offer an enhanced resistance to such high temperature erosion. As it was already known that the addition of chromium to steels effectively raised the material’s melting point, as compared to the standard carbon steels, he began to examine new higher-chromium steel compositions.

The research concentrated on quantifying the effects of varying the levels of carbon (C, at concentrations around 0.2 weight %) and chromium (Cr, in the range of 6 to 15 weight %).

In order to study the microstructure of the experimental alloys (the main factor responsible for a steel’s mechanical properties) it was necessary to polish and etch the metallic samples produced. For a carbon steel, a dilute solution of nitric acid in alcohol is sufficient to produce the required etching, but Brearley found that the new chromium steels were very resistant to chemical attack.

It was probably Harry Brearley’s upbringing in Sheffield, a city famous for the manufacture of cutlery since the 16th. Century, which led him to appreciate the potential of these new steels for applications not only in high temperature service, as originally envisioned, but also in the mass production of food-related applications such as cutlery, saucepans and processing equipment etc. With this in mind he extended his examinations to include tests with food acids such as vinegar and lemon juice, with very promising results. (Up to that time carbon steel knives were prone to unhygienic rusting if they were not frequently polished and only expensive silver or nickel plated cutlery was generally available to avoid such problems). It is reported [1] that the first true “stainless steel” (a term coined by Ernest Stuart of R.F. Moseley’s, a local cutlery manufacturer), a 0.24wt% C, 12.8wt% Cr ferrous alloy was produced by Brearley in an electric furnace in the August of 1913.

Virtually all research projects into the further development of stainless steels were interrupted by the 1914-18 War, but efforts were renewed in the 1920s. Though Harry Brearly left the Brown Firth Laboratories, following disagreements regarding patent rights, the research did continue there under the direction of his successor, Dr. W.H.Hatfield (also famous for the development of high-manganese “work hardening steels” for use in railway tracks).

It is Hatfield who is credited with the development, in 1924, of a stainless steel which even today is probably the widest-used alloy of this type, the so-called “18/8” (18wt% Cr, 8wt% Ni).

Brearley died, after World War II, in 1948, at Torquay, a coastal resort in the south of England.

External Links

• "The Development of Stainless Steel"
• "Harry Brearley"