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🇬🇧🔬 Open your kitchen drawer. Pick up a knife.
The metal you are holding was invented by a Sheffield steelworker's son.
His name was Harry Brearley. He was born in Sheffield in 1871. He left school at 12 and went to work in the same steelworks as his father. ⚙️
He educated himself in chemistry at night, by candlelight, in evening classes.
By his early forties, he was running the Brown-Firth Research Laboratory.
In 1912, the British military gave him a problem. Their rifle barrels were wearing out too quickly from the heat of repeated firing. They needed a steel that could survive higher temperatures.
He was solving a different problem.
On 13 August 1913, Brearley cast an alloy with 12.8% chromium. He took a polished sample. He left it on a workbench. Weeks later, he came back.
🔥 Every other sample had rusted. His one had not.
A steel that would never rust.
He took it to his employers. They were not interested. He took it to the Sheffield cutlers. They told him it could not be sharpened. The talk of the town was that Harry Brearley had invented a knife that would not cut.
He persisted.
⚖️ He found a cutler called Ernest Stuart at the Portland Works who tested the steel with vinegar and lemon juice. The blade did not stain.
Stuart suggested a new name for it. Not rustless steel.
Stainless steel.
Within a decade, Sheffield was the stainless steel capital of the world. Within a century, stainless steel was in every kitchen, every hospital, every operating theatre, every kitchen sink, every skyscraper, every spacecraft. 🚀
Harry Brearley never grew rich from his invention.
He did not invent for money. He invented for the country.
He died in 1948, still in Sheffield, still working class.
✍️ Every modern thing that does not rust began in a Sheffield laboratory. By accident. In the hands of a steelworker's son.
🇬🇧 The British write their own history. They always have.
Help us remember who we are. Help us remember every British achievement. 👇🙏
👉 proudofus.co.uk/support 👈
Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧
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