Sheffield
Crucible steel and stainless steel were both invented here, a century and a half apart.
A city in South Yorkshire whose name has been a byword for cutlery and tool steel since the fourteenth century — Chaucer's miller carries a Sheffield knife. Its advantages were local: millstone grit for grinding wheels, fast streams for water power, iron and coal within reach.
Its contribution to materials is two inventions of the first rank. Benjamin Huntsman's crucible process around 1740 melted steel fully for the first time in Europe, producing a uniform metal that cementation steel never was. Harry Brearley's discovery of stainless steel in 1913, while investigating gun barrel erosion, is the second.
History
Crucible steel from the 1740s made Sheffield the centre of the European tool and cutlery trade for a century and a half. Bessemer built his first steelworks here in 1858.
Brearley's 1913 alloy was found because a rejected experimental sample failed to rust on the scrap heap, and the story is well enough documented to survive the usual scepticism about such accounts. He had to argue for its use in cutlery against a trade that regarded a knife that could not be sharpened easily as a defective knife.
Economic significance
Bulk steelmaking left in the twentieth century, and what remained is the high-value end: special steels, aerospace alloys and research. The pattern is common in materials — the process that industrialises a material moves to wherever energy and ore are cheapest, and the place that invented it keeps the metallurgy.
How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.
How this connects
Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.
produces
- Tool steel — alloy · crucible steel from the 1740s, which made the town the centre of the European tool and cutlery trade for a century and a half
- Stainless steel — alloy · discovered here in 1913 by Harry Brearley, investigating gun barrel erosion, and found on a scrap heap because it had not rusted
is associated with
- Industrial Revolution — event · Bessemer built his first steelworks here in 1858, at the point iron gave way to steel
Sources
- Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
- Material WorldOur own writing