linguistic:paraphrasing
History

The invention of stainless steel followed a series of scientific developments, starting in 1798 when chromium was first shown to the French Academy by Louis Vauquelin. In the early 1800s, British scientists James Stoddart, Michael Faraday, and Robert Mallet observed the resistance of chromium-iron alloys ("chromium steels") to oxidizing agents. Robert Bunsen discovered chromium's resistance to strong acids. The corrosion resistance of iron-chromium alloys may have been first recognized in 1821 by Pierre Berthier, who noted their resistance against attack by some acids and suggested their use in cutlery.

In the 1840s, both Britain's Sheffield steelmakers and then Krupp of Germany were producing chromium steel with the latter employing it for cannons in the 1850s. In 1861, Robert Forester Mushet took out a patent on chromium steel in Britain.

These events led to the first American production of chromium-containing steel by J. Baur of the Chrome Steel Works of Brooklyn for the construction of bridges. A US patent for the product was issued in 1869. This was followed with recognition of the corrosion resistance of chromium alloys by Englishmen John T. Woods and John Clark, who noted ranges of chromium from 5–30%, with added tungsten and "medium carbon". They pursued the commercial value of the innovation via a British patent for "Weather-Resistant Alloys".

Scientists researching steel corrosion in the second half of the 19th century didn't pay attention to the amount of carbon in the alloyed steels they were testing until in 1898 Adolphe Carnot and E. Goutal noted that chromium steels better resist to oxidation with acids the less carbon they contain.

Also in the late 1890s, German chemist Hans Goldschmidt developed an aluminothermic (thermite) process for producing carbon-free chromium. Between 1904 and 1911, several researchers, particularly Leon Guillet of France, prepared alloys that would be considered stainless steel today.

In 1908, the Essen firm Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft built the 366-ton sailing yacht Germania featuring a chrome-nickel steel hull, in Germany. In 1911, Philip Monnartz reported on the relationship between chromium content and corrosion resistance. On 17 October 1912, Krupp engineers Benno Strauss and Eduard Maurer patented as Nirosta the austenitic stainless steel known today as 18/8 or AISI type 304.

Similar developments were taking place in the United States, where Christian Dantsizen of General Electric and Frederick Becket (1875–1942) at Union Carbide were industrializing ferritic stainless steel. In 1912, Elwood Haynes applied for a US patent on a martensitic stainless steel alloy, which was not granted until 1919.