- 1–3 September 2021

Harry Brearley left school at 12 to become a labourer in his father’s steelworks, and later a general assistant in the company’s chemical laboratory. He studied at home and evening classes on steel production and chemistry. In 1908 two of Sheffield’s steel companies set up a joint research laboratory, at which he began to research new steels which would better resist the erosion caused by high temperatures (rather than corrosion). He began to examine the addition of chromium to steel, and produced the first true stainless steel (a 0.24% C, 12.8% Cr alloy) on 13 August 1913.