Sometime in 1882, a skinny, dark-haired, 11-year-old boy named Harry Brearley entered a steelworks for the first time. A shy kid—he was scared of the dark, and a picky eater—he was also curious, and the industrial revolution in Sheffield, England, offered much in the way of amusements. He enjoyed wandering around town—he later called himself a Sheffield Street Arab—watching road builders, bricklayers, painters, coal deliverers, butchers, and grinders. He was drawn especially to workshops; if he couldn’t see in a shop window, he would knock on the door and offer to run an errand for the privilege of watching whatever work was going on inside. Factories were even more appealing, and he had learned to gain access by delivering, or pretending to deliver, lunch or dinner to an employee. Once inside, he must have reveled, for not until the day’s end did he emerge, all grimy and gray but for his blue eyes. Inside the steelworks, the action compelled him so much that he spent hours sitting inconspicuously on great piles of coal, breathing through his mouth, watching brawny men shoveling fuel into furnaces, hammering white-hot ingots of iron.
There was one operation in particular that young Harry liked: a toughness test performed by the blacksmith. After melting and pouring a molten mixture from a crucible, the blacksmith would cast a bar or two of that alloy, and after it cooled, he would cut notches in the ends of those bars. Then he’d put the bars in a vise, and hammer away at them.
The effort required to break the metal bars, as interpreted through the blacksmith’s muscles, could vary by an order of magnitude, but the result of the test was expressed qualitatively. The metal was pronounced on the spot either rotten or darned good stuff. The latter was simply called D.G.S. The aim of the men at that steelworks, and every other, was to produce D.G.S., and Harry took that to heart.
In this way, young Harry became familiar with steelmaking long before he formally taught himself as much as there was to know about the practice. It was the beginning of a life devoted to steel, without the distractions of hobbies, vacations, or church. It was the origin of a career in which Brearley wrote eight books on metals, five of which contain the word steel in the title; in which he could argue about steelmaking—but not politics—all night; and in which the love and devotion he bestowed upon inanimate metals exceeded that which he bestowed upon his parents or wife or son. Steel was Harry’s true love. It would lead, eventually, to the discovery of stainless steel.
Harry Brearley was born on Feb. 18, 1871, and grew up poor, in a small, cramped house on Marcus Street, in Ramsden’s Yard, on a hill in Sheffield. The city was the world capital of steelmaking; by 1850 Sheffield steelmakers produced half of all the steel in Europe, and 90 percent of the steel in England. By 1860, no fewer than 178 edge tool and saw makers were registered in Sheffield. In the first half of the 19th century, as Sheffield rose to prominence, the population of the city grew fivefold, and its filth grew proportionally. A saying at the time, that “where there’s muck there’s money,” legitimized the grime, reek, and dust of industrial Sheffield, but Harry recognized later that it was a misfortune to be from there, for nobody had much ambition.
The house Harry grew up in was sparse and tight; the living room measured 10 feet square, with two bedrooms above it. The kids ate standing up because there were not enough chairs. There were no books, or pictures, or toys; there was no space for a desk. The Brearleys were heartily poor but not starving, yet they weren’t far from the breadline. Harry wore jackets that had been made from his father’s trousers. He helped deliver coal in a wheelbarrow in return for sweets. After school, he bundled sticks, earning a penny for a dozen bundles. He used to walk along nearby railroad tracks, collect lumps of coal that had fallen from passing trains, and bring them home to his mother. He once borrowed a book from the library, and copied it—the whole thing—by hand, because he couldn’t afford to buy a copy. In 1882 his parents moved down to Carlisle Street, beside the railroad tracks—a place said to be separated from hell by only a sheet of tissue paper. It was filthier, dustier, smokier. But Harry loved it, on account of the increased color and variety. There was a pigsty and stables to poke around in, and more adult conversation to pick up. On account of his curiosity, he was regularly late for school; he found too much to look at on the way. He got away from school, at age 11, with his “brains unshackled and his curiosity undimmed,” and was then free to work, according to the law, in nonfactory conditions.
He was so overwhelmed by the amount of glassware that he figured it was a place people came to drink.
He was unhappy in his first jobs. He spent three days in Marsland’s Clog Shop, blacking boots and carrying things from 8 in the morning until 11 o’clock at night, and hated it. He spent a week in Moorwood’s Iron Foundry, painting black varnish onto kitchen stoves, before being discharged on account of labor regulations. He spent six weeks helping a doctor, but was disheartened by the subservience the man required. Finally his father took him to work in the Thomas Firth & Sons steelmaking factory, where he worked as a nipper, or cellar boy, moving clay stands and covers wherever needed in the dark, hot ashes of the cellar, and skimming the slag from the steel. Everybody, including his father, thought he was too small and weak for the job, but he spent three months at Firth’s, working long, sweaty days, before he was once again discharged on account of violating labor regulations.
He was then hired as a bottle washer by James Taylor, the chief chemist in a laboratory of the same steelmakers. Harry hadn’t ever heard the word laboratory before and, when he first showed up, was so overwhelmed by the amount of glassware that he figured it was a place people came to drink. At first, he found the work tedious, but his mother encouraged him to stay there, as it was undoubtedly better than the melting furnaces in the steelworks. Harry was only 12; he would become Taylor’s protégé.
Taylor started his training by teaching Harry arithmetic (Harry had to buy the book himself) and then, a couple of years later, algebra (Taylor bought him the book, a gift Harry brought home to show off, and never forgot). Taylor bought Harry a set of drawing instruments too. Taylor was not social, not a drinker, not a smoker, not a swearer. He didn’t even speak in the Sheffield dialect. But he was thrifty and handy, and the set of skills he displayed was formative for Harry. Under Taylor, Harry learned to join wood, paint, solder, plumb, blow glass, bind books, and work with metal. While his friends were out playing, Harry was learning new skills. This knowledge later inspired Harry to make his own furniture, stitch his own sandals, and try writing. His first attempt, an article for Windsor magazine, described the nature of various inks in creating inkblots, of which he made a few hundred; the next was titled “Bubble-Blowing as a Physical Exercise.” Some hobbies. He also attended night school, on Taylor’s urging, studying math and physics a few nights a week.
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