Rust: The Longest War

by Jonathan Waldman

  The factory didn’t like them.

  Brearley noticed that cut samples of the metal he’d sent had funny properties. He later recalled that, suddenly remembering a date to the theater with his wife, he left some samples in water overnight, and found them unstained the next morning. He studied the metal by polishing it, then etching it with a solution of nitric acid dissolved in alcohol, and looking at it under a microscope. It wouldn’t etch, or, rather, it etched very very slowly. It reacted to vinegar and lemon juice the same way. He compared a polished sample of carbon steel to a polished sample of the chromium steel, and was amazed to find after twelve days that while the former had rusted, the latter remained shiny and bright.

  Brearley wrote a report, and gave it to his boss. The new metal didn’t excite anybody, as far as ordnance was concerned. Brearley couldn’t let it go. He wrote another report for Brown’s, highlighting the noncorrosive nature of the metal. Ditto for Firth’s. He suggested that the metal might be advantageously used in cutlery, which, at the time, was made of carbon steel or sterling silver. (The former rusted, as he well knew; the latter was expensive and still tarnished, which really means that the copper, constituting 8 percent of the alloy, corroded.) The response was not even lukewarm.

  He didn’t let it go. By the end of 1913, he couldn’t stop talking about the utility of the new metal for cutlery. That he thought of cutlery first isn’t surprising. He’d spent enough time as a kid helping his mother with domestic chores that he knew the toil associated with cleaning and drying forks, knives, and spoons. Sheffield had also been the center of the cutlery industry since the sixteenth century. He sent samples off to two Sheffield cutlers, George Ibberson and James Dixon. A few months later, a report came back: the steel wouldn’t forge, grind, harden, or polish—and wouldn’t stay sharp. It was useless for cutlery. Ibberson wrote back: “In our opinion this steel is unsuited for Cutlery steel.” The cutlers called him “the inventor of knives that won’t cut.”

  Still, Brearley wouldn’t drop it; he said the cutlers were wrong, and said so impolitely. He suggested to his bosses that they sell heat-treated knife blanks. They said no. He suggested a patent. They said no. He continued to make a nuisance of himself.

  It’s difficult to imagine now, but rustless steel must have seemed an oxymoron of the highest order, like unshatterable glass or unrottable wood or an unsinkable ship or an unkillable person. Iron and steel rust. It’s what they do. It’s how they are. Everyone grew up recognizing as much. As Brearley wrote later, “The rusting of iron and steel is accepted, like the force of gravity, without question; it is the one property of iron universally recognised. People who have no notion of its tensile strength, or its atomic weight, know that it rusts.”

  In June 1914 Brearley met a cutlery manager named Ernest Stuart, of the cutlers Robert F. Mosley, whose persistence rivaled his own. Brearley and Stuart had gone to school under the same headmaster. Stuart doubted that a rustless steel existed but recognized that such a thing would be worth bothering about. He bothered by testing a piece in vinegar, after which he reportedly said, “This steel stains less.” Stuart was the one who first called it stainless. He took a small sample. A week later, he returned with some cheese knives. He declared them rustless and stainless. But the steel was too hard, and had dulled all of his sharpening tools. He swore. He tried again, and the knives came back very hard, but very brittle. On the third try, Brearley was invited along to watch, even though he knew nothing about knife making. But he knew the temperature at which the steel hardened, and he helped make a dozen knives.

  On October 2, 1914, Brearley wrote another report for his bosses, when he realized that this new stainless steel could be useful in spindles, pistons, plungers, and valves—in addition to cutlery. If anything, it was this tenacity—this quasi-insanity—that set him apart from earlier discoverers.

  That same year, James Taylor returned from Australia, and moved in with Brearley and his wife for a year—no doubt soothing much of Brearley’s fury.

  Firth’s, by then, recognized the industrial value of Brearley’s steel for use in engine exhaust valves, and had begun marketing it as F.A.S.—Firth’s Aeroplane Steel. In 1914, the company produced 50 tons of the steel; over the next two years, Firth’s produced 1,000 tons more. Brearley bought 18 bars of it—125 pounds total, for 6 pounds, 15 shillings, 5 pence through Amalgam Co. (Two years later, this would have been illegal; with the Great War under way, the British government decreed that all chromium steels could be used for defense purposes only.) He made knives and gave them to his friends. He gave them to Stuart’s friends. He instructed them to return the knives if, upon contact with any food, they stained or rusted. No knife was returned. Stuart knew he was looking at the future, and ordered, over a few weeks, seven more tons of the metal.

  Success brought immediate animosity, because Brearley had one vision, and Firth’s had another. Firth’s omitted Brearley’s name. Firth advertised itself as the discoverer, inventor, and originator of stainless steel, in ads, posters, and labels on bars of steel. One such ad, from 1915, said this:

  FIRTH’S

  “STAINLESS

  STEEL”

  for CUTLERY, etc.

  NEITHER RUSTS, STAINS NOR TARNISHES.

  * * *

  Cutlery made from this Steel, being totally

  unaffected by FOOD ACIDS, VINEGAR &c will

  be found a boon in EVERY HOUSEHOLD and may

  be had of all the LEADING MANUFACTURERS.

  * * *

  SEE THAT YOUR KNIVES OF THIS STEEL BEAR

  THE MARK FIRTH STAINLESS

  * * *

  The daily toll at the knifeboard

  or the cleaning machine is

  now quite unnecessary.

  ORIGINAL & SOLE MAKERS

  THOS FIRTH & SONS, LTD., SHEFFIELD

  Brearley complained and got a bitter letter in response. Yet he insisted. He told his boss, Ethelbert Wolstenholme, that he’d given Firth’s a commercial opportunity, and that it had agreed to share any discoveries. But he’d also proven the company wrong and was to suffer for it. He was ignored, cast aside, told to deal with underlings. Annoyed and suspicious, he wrote a tactless letter to his boss. This led to a conference with Firth’s three directors, who told him plainly that he had no rights in the matter. A few days later, on December 27, 1914, feeling wronged, more sad than angry—convinced that “workmen are often much wiser than their masters”—he resigned.

  Harry Brearley didn’t know it then, but the stuff he cast from the electric furnace at Firth’s on August 20, 1913, was nothing new. At least ten others had created it, or something like it, before; at least half a dozen had described it; and one guy even explained it, and explained it well. Others had patented it, and commercialized it. Before Brearley got around to it, at least two dozen scientists in England, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the United States were studying alloys of steel by varying the amounts of chromium, nickel, and carbon in it. Faraday had tried as much nearly a century earlier. It’s not like Brearley was exploring unknown territory. That he is credited with discovering stainless steel is due mostly to luck; that he is credited with fathering it is due mostly to his resolve.

  Stainless steels, like whiskeys, come in many blends, and a Frenchman named Léon Guillet made five of them in 1904 but failed to notice their corrosion resistance. He made two more in 1906 and didn’t notice them, either. In 1908 the German Philip Monnartz showed far more attentiveness. Describing his alloy in a paper three years later, he described a precipitous drop in corrosion with the addition of chromium, and called the phenomenon passivity. A year later, the German steelworks Krupp secretly filed patents for “fabrication of objects that require high corrosion resistance.” Two metallurgists there had been examining nickel-chromium steel since 1908. One alloy they made is today the world’s most popular. First called alloy V2A, it was marketed as Nirosta, and produced by the ton in 1914. But even that may not have been Krupp’s first foray into
stainless steel.

  In 1908, Bertha Krupp, the wealthy daughter of the owner of the Krupp Works, commissioned a 154-foot-long steel-hulled schooner for her new husband, the Count Bohlen und Halbach. She spent $4.5 million (in today’s dollars) lavishly outfitting the 191-ton Germania with white pine decks, Oregon pine masts, a 26-foot bowsprit, 15,000 square feet of the finest sails available, a stately dining room, and an elegant hull, painted white, made of chromium-nickel steel.

  After the couple spent their honeymoon on board, an English crew raced the boat to victory at the 1908 Kaiser’s Cup at Cowes, finishing fifteen minutes ahead of her nearest competitor, and setting a record around the Isle of Wight with an average speed of 13.1 knots. She made the kaiser proud. She won the race again, and others, before she was seized in Southampton on October 28, 1915, one of the first prisoners of the Great War. England had tons of a new stainless steel in her possession and didn’t know it. Brearley, by then, was in possession of his own patent.

  The early alloyers of steel had a difficult time commercializing their discoveries. Robert Hadfield, who made the first real, commercially valuable alloy, called Hadfield’s manganese steel, had to wait a decade for it to take off. In his lab journal, on September 7, 1882, he described the peculiar nature of his alloy: it was soft but tough, and tempering it made it softer and tougher still; and even though it was 80 percent iron, it wasn’t magnetic. It astonished him. He wrote, “Wonderfully tough, even with a 16lb hammer could hardly break it . . . Really grand. Hurrah!!!” It was bad for tools. It was bad for horseshoes. It was bad for fire pokers and car wheels. Hadfield grumbled in a letter to his American agent, “The material is being tried for a considerable variety of purposes but the people are so slow on this side & inventors here have so many prejudices.” Finally, ten years after he made it, it was found ideal for railroad tracks. It lasted almost fifty times longer than carbon steel, and became the standard for heavy duty rails. With a new silicon steel Hadfield discovered in 1884, the situation was nearly the same. That time, he had to wait two decades before commercial viability became evident.

  Commercial success demanded blending science and marketing; a steelmaker had to recognize not just the value of a new alloy, but its potential use. Benno Strauss, of the Krupp Works, later spoke about recognizing the potential of his stainless steel in plumbing, cutlery, medical equipment, and mirrors. He, like Brearley—who realized his stainless steel would be useful in spindles, pistons, plungers, and valves—was focused. He also knew that V2A wouldn’t work. Nirosta would. Other steelmakers followed suit. Where the first alloys were named after the discoverer—Hadfield’s manganese steel, R. Mushet’s Special Steel, Firth’s Aeroplane Steel (FAS)—later discoveries were marketed with an ear toward popular usage: Rezistal, Neva-Stain, Staybrite, Nonesuch, Enduro, Nirosta, Rusnorstain. In the naming of his alloy, Brearley owes a great debt to Stuart. He made FAS sound better than D.G.S. He made it sound like a miracle, and it worked.

  A month after Brearley resigned, news of his stainless steel reached America. On January 31, 1915, the New York Times announced the discovery:

  A NON-RUSTING STEEL;

  SHEFFIELD INVENTION ESPECIALLY GOOD FOR TABLE CUTLERY.

  According to Consul John M. Savage, who is stationed at Sheffield, England, a firm in that city has introduced a stainless steel, which is claimed to be non-rusting, unstainable, and untarnishable. This steel is said to be especially adaptable for table cutlery, as the original polish is maintained after use, even when brought in contact with the most acid foods, and it requires only ordinary washing to cleanse.

  “It is claimed,” writes Mr. Savage in the Commerce Reports, “that this steel retains a keen edge much like that of the best double-sheer steel, and, as the properties claimed are inherent in the steel and not due to any treatment, knives can readily be sharpened on a ‘steel’ or by using the ordinary cleaning machine or knifeboard. It is expected it will prove a great boon, especially to large users of cutlery, such as hotels, steamships, and restaurants.

  “The price of this steel is about 26 cents a pound for ordinary sizes, which is about double the price of the usual steel for the same purpose. It also costs more to work up, so that the initial cost of articles made from this new discovery, it is estimated, will be about double the present cost; but it is considered that the saving of labor to the customer will more than cover the total cost of the cutlery in the first twelve months.”

  Here’s another reason why Brearley is credited as the discoverer of stainless steel: Reporters at the New York Times weren’t reading the metallurgical trade magazines. They didn’t know about Monnartz and Strauss.

  The first American ingot of Brearley’s stainless steel was cast thirty-one days later and sent directly to a knife maker.

  Not long after, a stranger named John Maddocks appeared on Brearley’s doorstep. He was a well-dressed seventy-five-year-old from London, and he saw the future in stainless steel. He said he had experience getting patents and offered to get Brearley an American patent. First, though, Brearley had to determine the limits of chemical composition that gave his metal the properties it had. Which meant that he needed a lab. Firth’s did not offer to help.

  Brearley applied for a patent on March 29, 1915. He was denied, because stainless steel was being made in England by at least seven companies. He reapplied, specifying it as a “new and useful improvement in cutlery” for metal with 9 percent to 16 percent chromium, and less than 0.7 percent carbon.

  It was a busy time for Brearley. In May he became the works manager at Brown Bayley’s Steelworks; by the end of the year, the company, which had never successfully sold steel alloys, was making and selling crankshafts for airplane engines as fast as it could. Six months into the job, he was offered a seat on the board. He gave up the post after three years so that he could keep working on matters more compelling than business, like axles, springs, billets, and shafts.

  Brearley was granted patent number 1,197,256 on September 5, 1916. By July 1917, he and Firth’s had agreed to form the Firth-Brearley Stainless Steel Syndicate. Firth’s paid Brearley £10,000 and half the shares for the interest in the patent, which was profitable, straight through the Depression. Brearley also got a bit of revenge, demanding that all knife blades made with the alloy bear his name, as Firth-Brearley Stainless.

  Given the effort and assistance it took Brearley to commercialize his stainless steel, a quote from one of his business partners may be most apt. He said that Brearley knew everything about stainless steel except how to make it. What he meant is that Brearley knew everything about stainless steel except how to market it.

  At the end of that July, Elwood Haynes told Harry Brearley to hold his horses. Haynes, of Kokomo, Indiana, was a wealthy businessman, active in politics and public affairs, with a mustache like a windshield. He’d managed the Kokomo Gas Company, overseen the building of the country’s first major long-distance natural gas pipeline, designed America’s first true automobile and founded a company that sold them, and founded a company that sold an alloy he’d invented, called Stellite. Stellite had made him a millionaire. He’d also run for the US Senate (as a Prohibitionist), and a few years later was elected president of the YMCA. Haynes didn’t want to sell stainless steel—he was too busy—but he wanted credit for the discovery.

  Haynes had been experimenting with corrosion-resistant alloys for cutlery since Brearley was sixteen years old, reading algebra. He’d made chisels and augur bits and spark plugs out of chromium-steel alloys more than a year before Brearley had looked through his microscope and not seen what he’d expected. He’d also filed for a patent seventeen days before Brearley, which meant his claim had legal merit. The US Patent Office granted Haynes an interference order on July 31, 1917.

  Haynes’s patent, which was finally granted on April 1, 1919, was for steels with between 8 percent and 60 percent chromium—a huge range—but it didn’t matter. Rather than litigate, the Firth-Brearley Stainless Steel Syndicate agreed to sh
are profits, by forming the American Stainless Steel Company with Haynes and five steelmakers (Bethlehem, Carpenter, Crucible, Midvale, and Firth-Sterling, the Firth subsidiary in Pittsburgh) in 1918. For a decade and a half, business was stellar, even though stainless steel cost four times as much as carbon steel. From 1923 to 1933, American’s average yearly dividend was 28 percent.

  In 1920, when the Ludlum Steel Co. began selling stainless steel, American sued, and the court eventually held Ludlum accountable for profits from stainless cutlery. In 1933, when the Rustless Iron Corp. of America began selling stainless steel, American sued again—but this time the court detected no patent infringement. The court said that historically, “thousands of tests and experiments, and manifold achievements, had already made the metallurgy of iron and steel a broad and highly developed field. A claim to monopoly of any part of that field by one entering it at this late day can be sustained only by clear proof of discovery of something there not before found, of an invention of something not before there.” The court, unlike the Times, knew about Guillet, Monnartz, Strauss, and others, thanks to Brearley, who testified. American appealed, and lost again. This time, the court said it more plainly. It said that the American Stainless Steel Company had a patent on a way of making a certain type of stainless steel cutlery, not all stainless steels used in all industries. That would be ridiculous.

  Nobody knows if Brearley felt vindicated, but chances are that he enjoyed seeing Firth’s greed stymied.