Aug. 13, 1913: Great Alloyed Victory for Stainless Steel

1913: English metallurgist Harry Brearley casts a steel alloy that's resistant to acidity and weathering. Because his sponsor names it "stainless steel," Brearley will often be credited as the inventor, but there are more metallurgists than metals in this story.

Even the hometown British Stainless Steel Association acknowledges that Brearley was not alone.

English and French researchers had learned as early as the 1820s that iron-chromium alloys resisted some acids. But they were restricted to low- rather than high-chromium-content alloys, because they hadn't yet figured out the necessity of lowering the carbon content.

Two Englishmen filed a patent for an acid-resistant steel with 30 to 35 percent chromium and 2 percent tungsten in 1872. But it was a French researcher named Brustlein who in 1875 detailed the importance of low carbon content. He determined that a high-chromium alloy would need carbon content below 0.15 percent or thereabouts.

The race was on. Very slowly. Many attempts produced many failures over the next 20 years.

Hans Goldschmidt of Germany broke the logjam in 1895 with the development of the aluminothermic reduction process for producing carbon-free chromium. French metallurgist Leon Guillet forged ahead, so to speak, with work on iron-nickel-chromium alloys in the first decade of the 20th century, but seemingly ignored their resistance to corrosion. Back in Germany, P. Monnartz and W. Borchers discovered in 1911 that having a minimum 10.5 percent chromium seriously increased steel's resistance to corrosion.

Enter Harry Brearley of Sheffield, England. He started working on a project in 1912 for a small-arms manufacturer that wanted to prevent its rifle barrels from eroding away quickly from the heat and friction of gunshot. Brearley needed to etch his steel-alloy samples to examine their granular structure under the microscope, but when he used nitric acid, the high-chromium samples resisted being dissolved. His focus shifted from erosion resistance to corrosion resistance.

After trying various combinations with 6 to 15 percent chromium and differing measures of carbon, he made a new alloy on Aug. 13, 1913, containing 12.8 percent chromium and 0.24 percent carbon. It resisted not only nitric acid, but lemon juice and vinegar as well.

So he took his discovery of "rustless steel" to Sheffield cutler R.F Mosley. A manager there, Ernest Stuart, renamed it "stainless steel."

But wait, there's more. Metallurgists at Germany's Krupp Iron Works were also working on high-chromium, corrosion-resistant steel alloys of various compositions between 1908 and 1914. Elwood Haynes and two other Americans were doing parallel work in the years 1908-1911, and Max Mauermann of Poland displayed something similar at the 1913 Adria exhibition in Vienna. And there's a Swedish claimant as well.

Brearley, however, did formulate the first alloy to be called stainless steel, and he recognized potential uses others had not seen. Today is the 95th anniversary of his discovery.

Source: British Stainless Steel Association

13.08.2008 06:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Are Music Tweets Mostly For Twits?

If we wanted to know where a band was every minute of the day, Twitter would be worth more than oil, or at least natural gas. But for anything other than product placement, tour updates or other release-related urgings, Twitter is totally useless when it comes to music. Pass it on.

13.08.2008 06:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Alt Text: How to Get Published and Avoid Alien Bloodsuckers

The internet has created enormous opportunities for aspiring writers. It's easier than ever to get your words in front of readers, who can then provide you with feedback, offer advice and attempt to scam you out of thousands of dollars while treating your dreams and aspirations the same way armed rural teenagers treat speed limit signs.

In a perfect world, the advent of the web would have sent literary scammers skittering back into their mucus-tube burrows. However, as I discover every time I search Google Images for any body part, this is not a perfect world. Many aspiring writers still react to supposedly professional interest with sparkling eyes and open wallets.

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Here are a couple hints to help you distinguish the scammers from legitimate publishers.

First off, don't be afraid. Scammers can smell fear, and to them it smells like the still-living flesh strips that make up most of their diet. A lot of aspiring writers see publishers and agents as bored nobility, offering contracts in a whimsical attempt to inject some entertainment into an otherwise tedious existence. They suspect that even putting too long a delay between "yes" and "please" will cause the contract to be withdrawn and fed to a purebred Saluki.

This isn't true. If publishers or agents are taking the time to talk to you about your submission, it means they like you like you. Sure, it's possible that nothing will come of it, but the very fact that you're actually talking to a real human being rather than having your manuscript rejected with a terse form letter means that you're free to ask questions, make suggestions and receive clarifications. So, do it! If an editor gets huffy at you over questions, that's a good sign that he's an ichor-oozing arthropod dressed up in human skin for the purpose of draining your lifeblood to feed their brood.

Now, even if the editor initially appears to be a mammal, it's still possible to get scammed. There's a wonderful rule of thumb known as Yog's Law: "Money flows toward the writer."

I know that in a world filled with kickbacks and graft, this seems too good to be true. It seems perfectly logical that you might have to spread around some cash, grease some palms and lubricate the chassis of commerce with some crude currency in order to make publishing run smoothly. Scammers leap on this misapprehension like a cat on cantaloupe.

OK, maybe I have a weird cat. The point is that you, the writer, do not pay the agent. You do not pay the publisher. Not for reading the manuscript, not for offering suggestions and certainly not for printing. The agent gets a portion of the money you've already made. The publisher makes a profit from sales. You do not write checks to these people for doing their jobs.

As a writer, you're free to spend as much money as you want for your own purposes, like workshops and hand-stitched dream journals and magic feathers. You might even choose to spend some or all of your advance on publicity, once you have the cash in hand. But if an agent or publisher tells you that you need to shell out in order to make the deal happen, you should listen for telltale chittering and examine the person's spine for the subdermal squirming associated with literary scammers.

None of this should be taken as a slight against legitimate businesses catering to self-publishers. These businesses will tell you exactly what you get for each dollar, and promise nothing more. They will not attempt to convince you that you're the next Browning, Kipling, Fleming, Golding or Rowling.

I myself was once an aspiring writer, before I became famous and wealthy beyond the fever dreams of a thousand rajahs. I know how difficult it is, and how tempting attention can be. But if you follow these guidelines, you'll not only protect yourself, you'll also protect the Earth from invasion by insectoid parasites that depend on the cooperation of naive writers to supplant humans as the planet's dominant species and put us to work as blood-cows for their throbbing young.

- - -

Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a professional writer.

13.08.2008 03:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Make Big Brother Proud: How to Tap a Phone Line

Eavesdropping on land-line communications is easier than ever with today's digital listening devices. But phone-tapping tech predates the digital age, so grab your screwdrivers and your electrical tape as we show you how to be an old-school snoop with this tutorial in Wired's How-To Wiki.

13.08.2008 02:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Memory Disruption Could Aid Addicts

Scientists have reduced the drug-seeking behaviors of cocaine-addicted rats by disrupting the memories they associate with getting high.

13.08.2008 00:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Indicted Fed Informant Coerced Hacker Into Caper That Drew 9-Year Sentence

A strange link emerges between a Secret Service informant charged with stealing millions of credit card numbers from TJ Maxx and other retailers, and an earlier WiFi hacking case that drew a record prison term for a Michigan hacker.

12.08.2008 23:44:00 - Wired: Top Stories

How to Back Up Your Bookmarks Online

Your browser's bookmarks are a collection of web gold. One browser update or computer crash, and your carefully collected bookmark collection turns to dust, which is why it is always a good idea to store a backup somewhere online. "Eek!" you say, "I don't want my bookmarks available to just anyone." No problem, we'll show you how to password-protect them from prying eyes.

12.08.2008 23:15:00 - Wired: Top Stories

New µTorrent Update Boosts Performance, Improves Vista Support

The popular Windows BitTorrent client µTorrent has been updated to provide better support for Vista users and the ability to handle speedier IPv6 traffic. The creators also hint that the long-awaited Mac OS X version will be released in just a few weeks.

12.08.2008 21:15:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Tire-Gauge Industry Pumps Up Obama Campaign Coffers

Big Oil doesn't control America's energy policy. The tire pressure gauge industry does.

12.08.2008 20:23:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Gmail Suffers Outage, World Ends

A glitch in Google's servers caused widespread outages to its popular Gmail service Monday afternoon, stranding hordes of users by denying them access to their e-mail accounts.

12.08.2008 02:40:00 - Wired: Top Stories