a question for all you sheffield born people out there.do you know why stainless steel origanated from sheffield.i do...but im going to let you all add you own ideas.(make them good!!!!):idea:

because to20's great great ancestors were capitalists and they wanted to spend all the money doing up ecclesall.

I think it's just because Harry Brearley was from the area. It could have happened anywhere where steel was made.

Benjamin Huntsman was also a local who perfected steel making.

Harry Brearley was born in Sheffield on 18th February 1871. His father, John was a steel melter at Firth's crucible steel furnaces.
Harry started work at the age of twelve in the same crucible steel workshop as his father. By the age of twenty, he was apprenticed as a laboratory assistant.
He left Sheffield for Russia to manage Firth's steel plant in Riga but returned to Sheffield in 1907 to manage the Brown Firth Research Laboratory; a joint venture between two of Sheffield's leading steel companies.

Like Henry Bessemer before him, he was working on a military project when he discovered the new steel. In 1912, whilst carrying out research on steels of different chemical compositions to improve the hardness and erosion resistance of rifle barrels, he specified a steel with a high chromium content.
A number of different samples were made with chromium content ranging from 6 to 15% and with differing carbon contents.
Hard steels with added chromium had been produced for many years but the chromium content was low (around 5%) and they had only limited corrosion resistance. These steels were used where toughness and reduced weight were important, especially in aero engines.

The first true stainless steel was melted on the 13th August 1913. It contained 12.8% chromium

I thought the local soft water was part of the explanation, otherwise a very full reply

Originally posted by kirstyhobson
a question for all you sheffield born people out there.do you know why stainless steel origanated from sheffield.i do...but im going to let you all add you own ideas.(make them good!!!!):idea:
Is it so we could poke fun at people from Rotherham & Barnsley? and say we got something you not got.

Take a look here. The chap himself.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/wharncliffe/attercliffe003.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/wharncliffe/attercliffe004.jpg

The folk legend handed down the generations to new young lads was that some poor old steel smelter having drunk too much ale on his way to his shift, got the mix wrong & when they tried to work the steel it was too hard.
So they chucked it into the stockyard at Ickles and some years later some bright spark realised it hadnt gone rusty.
They checked the mix and discovered stainless steel.

Far fetched maybe, but a much better story. ;)

I worked at Stocksbridge Engineering Steels for a year, and they were very proud of the local heritage there. I was told, as far as I remember, that stainless steel was first manufactured in sheffield for specific uses. When they discovered the excellent properties it had with resistance to corrosion and hardness of it. Although I understood that it wasn't actually invented in sheffield, but noone had thought of it as being useful before.

Escafed, your post seems very convincing, but are you shure that Brearley didn't re-discover and name it stainless steel? Because the manufacturing techniques had become modern enough to make the stuff reliably with accurate proportions.

Originally posted by Lostrider
The folk legend handed down the generations to new young lads was that some poor old steel smelter having drunk too much ale on his way to his shift, got the mix wrong & when they tried to work the steel it was too hard.
So they chucked it into the stockyard at Ickles and some years later some bright spark realised it hadnt gone rusty.
They checked the mix and discovered stainless steel.

Far fetched maybe, but a much better story. ;)

mate- thats virtually the right story!! it was discovered by him totally by accident- they used to throw the failed mixes onto the roof of an adjoining factory but one day they realised that one of the mixes had not gone rusty so they dug out what they made it with and hey presto- thats how it was made.

I work in steel and thats what a gentleman who works for ATI allvac told me, there is a plaque commemorating Harry Brearly near altlas house as your headin to meadowhall.

Originally posted by scottf
there is a plaque commemorating Harry Brearly near altlas house as your headin to meadowhall.

Am I mistaken, or was that Allvac I saw lying in a heap of rubble last night?

Originally posted by Strix
Am I mistaken, or was that Allvac I saw lying in a heap of rubble last night?

Could be- they have sold off most of the sites to developers and centralised everything into 2 plants now rather than the 6 or 7 they had in that area- the logistics were a nightmare.

a question for all you sheffield born people out there.do you know why stainless steel origanated from sheffield.i do...but im going to let you all add you own ideas.(make them good!!!!):idea:

Harry Brealey discoverd it by accident and I think it was at Brown Bailey's steelworks. They were trying to find elements (alloys) that would make the Gun Barrels harder............they added Chrome (Cr) to the Iron (Fe) and after a while realised it didn't rust.................Stainless Steel was born. There are many different types of stainless steel but the two most common are 17% Cr mixed with Iron (Fe) The other is 17% Cr, 8% Nickel (Ni) balance being iron (Fe) for working in an acidic area they added 2% of Molybdenum (Mo) to the latter.

Harry Brealey discoverd it by accident and I think it was at Brown Bailey's steelworks. They were trying to find elements (alloys) that would make the Gun Barrels harder............they added Chrome (Cr) to the Iron (Fe) and after a while realised it didn't rust.................Stainless Steel was born. There are many different types of stainless steel but the two most common are 17% Cr mixed with Iron (Fe) The other is 17% Cr, 8% Nickel (Ni) balance being iron (Fe) for working in an acidic area they added 2% of Molybdenum (Mo) to the latter.

"In 1912, Harry Brearley of the Brown-Firth research laboratory in Sheffield, England, while seeking a corrosion-resistant alloy for gun barrels, discovered and subsequently industrialized a martensitic stainless steel alloy. The discovery was announced two years later in a January 1915 newspaper article in The New York Times.[2] Brearly applied for a U.S. patent during 1915. This was later marketed under the "Staybrite" brand by Firth Vickers in England and was used for the new entrance canopy for the Savoy Hotel in 1929 in London." Find out more and contribute to Sheffields Industrial past on Facebook - Made In Sheffield - A History

I think the true story as been lost in time but like many have said it was first made by mistake or on a trial basis without its true value being known, as mentioned already the most common stainless is called 18/8 ( chrome / nickel) then there are many variants dependant on the end use.

Typical examples of the wrong type being used is stainless phone boxes and the national centre for music or whatever its called now, they suffered from a yellow bloom ( not really rust ) probably due to cost cutting on the chrome content, another example is cheap stainless sinks that often get the same “bloom”

Now this is a true story, many years ago a steelworker fell into a molten ingot of steel and unable to retrieve his body before the steel solidified they eventually had to bury the ingot at the cemetery, 50 tons it weighed and they had to transport it to the cemetery on a low loader and use a massive crane to lower it into the grave. Honest it must be true my Dad told me about it many a time.

Now this is a true story, many years ago a steelworker fell into a molten ingot of steel and unable to retrieve his body before the steel solidified they eventually had to bury the ingot at the cemetery, 50 tons it weighed and they had to transport it to the cemetery on a low loader and use a massive crane to lower it into the grave. Honest it must be true my Dad told me about it many a time.

ssshhhh, don't tell the scrap-men the location or they'll av it away lol

Pretty much as Lostrider describes it.

Brearley gives a full account in his autobiography Knotted String :Autobiography of A Steel-maker

2 copies available at Central Library.

ssshhhh, don't tell the scrap-men the location or they'll av it away lol

Another true story told to me by my Dad. Many years ago there was a Sheffield sausage factory (no names no pack drill) that used to round up all the stray dogs and drive them into an opening in the factory wall that led to a special machine which had another opening at the other end and sausages came out of there.

Tell people that today and they won't believe you.

Talking about sausages during the war our local butcher got fined for putting horsemeat in his sausages and believe me it didn't get there by accident

Like the bloke who worked at Hartleys Jam factory, he fell into the hot jam vat and his last words were "heavens preseve us"

I think the question you really need to ask is why steel originates in Sheffield. Stainless only came from Sheffield 'cos of the profusion of steelworks & sooner or later someone, somewhere would have discovered it. However it would have been unlikely to have originated from the shoe factories of Nottingham or the citrus orchards of Seville! Riddo7up pretty much hits the nail on the head. The growth of the Sheffield steel industry was down to the fast flowing rivers coming down off the moors to power the water wheels & provide the large amount of water required in steel production. The Manchester cotton mills emerged for the same reasons plus soft water was required for the finishing process.

Like the bloke who worked at Hartleys Jam factory, he fell into the hot jam vat and his last words were "heavens preseve us"

Presumably the bloke who was buried encased in metal had the inscription "Ingot we rust" engraved on his headstone?

Presumably the bloke who was buried encased in metal had the inscription "Ingot we rust" engraved on his headstone?

Before anyone else says it - 'rust in peace' :roll:

stainless was made in Sheffield just so people could brag 50yrs later

my grandfather was chief metalurgist for the navy and he used to go round testing the stainless for gun barrels , he had a young lad called monty finiston as his assistant