Harry Brearley was born in Sheffield, England, one of the historic centers of English steel production, and took up work at the Brown Firth Laboratories, where one of his first major tasks was finding a better metal alloy for British guns. The combination of combustible gases, high temperatures and exposure to moisture quickly corroded the insides of gun barrels, making them useless. Brearley first experimented with the addition of chromium, previously done in engines, to raise the alloy’s melting point. He did not find his intended effect, but found something else quite interesting.

On this day, August 13, in 1913 Brearley created steel alloy, with 12.8% chromium and 0.24% carbon, was the first ever stainless steel. Brearley found out when he tried to polish the etch the metal to prepare it for study that it resisted the nitric acid and alcohol solution.

Brearley quickly recognized the material’s potential appeal to his hometown’s cutlery industry. He turned to his old school friend, Ernest Stuart, who ran one of the cutlery shops, and within several weeks the two had perfected a hardening process that would produce durable and rustproof knives. Brearley originally came up with “Rustless Steel”, for his new invention but  Stuart found a better sounding version, “Stainless Steel”.