Stainless Forgotten History: A Revolution in Steel 

As a retired metallurgical engineer, I say, "Well done my good man!"

Anyone who can make stainless steel engaging deserves a subscription

Love this man’s enthusiasm for his topic, as well as his comprehensive use of the English language in describing the topic.

My Grandfather worked for the company in Sheffield that Brearly worked for that went on to become Firth Vickers. My Father worked there for a short time before the outbreak of WWII but left England shortly after the war. I still have my Grandfathers watch that was given to him for 50 years loyal service at Firth Vickers. I work in the metal fabrication industry and use stainless in many applications. Thanks for your info on this as it is part of my families history as well.

As someone who has spent about 20 years in the welding profession, I can really appreciate the metallurgical information you put in this episode.

I _seriously_ geek out on the history of metallurgy. You can talk about metal all the live long day and I'll watch all of it. Great episode.

I tell my college students that this is the highest expression of metallurgy in the last 10,000 years. You tell its history so thoroughly and passionately, History Guy! Well done!

I cannot believe you created an entire episode on stainless steel. I looooove stainless steel, it is one of the most fascinating family of alloys out there. Thank you so much for making this available.

"History that deserves to be remembered" IS a classic line that really does exemplify what this channel is all about. Thank you for reminding us to remember the past.

My dad was an ironworker and one of his very first jobs was building the St Louis Arch.

Elwood Haynes really deserves one of these episodes all to himself… he was a truly amazing man.

An interesting trait I notice about those that respect history is a corresponding reverence and optimism about the future. So needed today.

As a wheelchair user with Cerebral Palsy who has had 2 stainless steel rods attached to my spine, I know its benefits well.

The History guy is truly one of the greatest, taking any and every form of history and bringing it to people directly!

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis was built starting on February 12, 1963 and was completed on October 28, 1965. I still enjoy all the presentations previously viewed

I heard that the folks in the City of East Saint Louis have plans to build a giant croquet ball on their side of the Mississippi river.

Thank you for this. My grandpa was the foreman at the Warren, Pennsylvania Pitt-Des Moines (PDM) plant which fabricated 80% of the Arch. (The Pittsburgh PDM plant fabricated the rest.) My cousins and I always thought of it as Grandpa's Arch because he was so proud to have worked on it. We only learned several years ago that he was the foreman. His men mentioned that he would be missed when they visited the Arch as a group in Nov of 2012. Kenneth Wright said this around the time of their trip. To me, there's something so striking about these words. “At the time, it seemed like just another job. We never dreamed it would be this magnificent and this great of a thing.”

I'm watching this at work while my CNC milling machine is cutting 15-5PH stainless steel.

HG, I don’t know how you can make subjects that seem so mundane on the surface so interesting at the core. Love your videos!

Another excellent presentation and production. And the acronym of the American Stainless Steel company deserves to be laughed at.

When I was young, 50 years ago, my father would take me to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. I remember a shiny airplane on display, outside. I've since learned it was a one-off prototype stainless steel airplane (I think from the 1930s), but not practical, too heavy. It's still on display, still shiny (Google "franklin institute stainless steel airplane" to see a picture of it). About that time, the Reading Railroad (now SEPTA) adopted the Silverliner series of electric railcars. Handsome. all stainless multiple unit passenger cars. SEPTA still runs Silverliners, although newer models. I really enjoy the History Guy's enthusiasm about a subject, any subject!

For 37 years from 1947 - 1984 (until we sold it) our company used Stainless in the manufacture of Fishing Rod Hardware and Marine Hardware for Sailboats. The Stainless Steel Alloy 18-8, 18% chromium and 8% nickle was perfect for the saltwater environment of our products. We also used a process called Electro Polishing which was the reverse of plating and actually etched the surface of the Stainless Steel components to remove the iron from the surface making the parts even more resistant to corrosion.

After working in a stainless steel factory starting 1979 I´m retiring july 30 this year (7 moore shift to go) . We have produced stainless steel starting 1924 in Avesta Sweden and we are now part of Outokumpu. Love your history lesson.

This man is my favorite teacher. To learn without boredom....yeah!

Another great example of how a mundane subject can be presented rather interestingly. Kudos!

Sheffield provided stainless steel for ships named Sheffield and many of the fittings were stainless steel rather than brass. It is for this reason the 1930's cruiser and (I believe) all ships since have had the nickname "Shiny Sheffield" or "Shiny Sheff".

The History Guy's idea for, initial use of, and present tradition of using his trademark phrase, "... is history that deserves to be remembered" in every video . . . deserves to be remembered.

Being also from the Saint Louis area I am fascinated by our Indian history and the Mounds in the area, also what happened to some of them. Thanks so much for your videos!

More please. Hailing from the rust belt--(Detroit area), I'm sure I'm not the only one with interest in the history of industrialists and processes that have formed the backbone of our modern existence.

It shows how messed up things are when a channel like this has 1/2M subs and crap channels have millions. Thank you for making these awesome vids.

Being a metal guy, I loved it! Us blue-collar guys need history lessons too.

St. Louis is perfect for your mindset. That city is full of history that seems to have been forgotten by the rest of the Nation.

A major breakthrough in the use of stainless steel occurred in 1932 when a metallurgist, Earl Ragsdale, of the Edward G. Budd Company in Philadelphia, invented a method of welding it without ruining its corrosion resistance, as normal welding does. In a process they called Shot Weld, a short electrical burst fuses the metal without damaging or weakening it. Budd became a major manufacturer of stainless steel railroad passenger cars, producing the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy's Pioneer Zephyr, which made a record breaking non-stop "dawn to dusk" run between Denver and Chicago in May 1934, covering the 1,034 miles in a bit over 13 hours. The Budd Company built thousands of cars for railroads all over the world, distinguished by their fluted sides and roofs of stainless steel -- the corrugations adding strength to the sheet steel, which also allowed for lighter weight. Many Budd-built cars are still in use on Amtrak, and until recently, cars from the early Fifties were still running on Amtrak trains. In New York City, some Budd subway cars (the R32 series) from 1964 are still in operation, 55 years after delivery. Their bodies are as good as ever; the electrical and mechanical systems have needed upgrades and overhauls. (Only a series of wood-bodied elevated cars built in 1903 and 1905 which served until 1969 have a longer record of use.) The Budd Company played an important part in the story of stainless steel.

I have been marching stainless steel for 40+ years. Thanks for opening my eyes to appreciate the material that puts food on my table. History Guy rocks!

Great job! Despite working with stainless steel since the late 60's; from working in a steel mill to pay my way through college to chemistry being part of my undergrad double major to later building many things using stainless steel, I never heard such a complete history of the alloy. Thanks!!

I like the fact you told exactly the same line I was told as a young engineer; it really is what it is called in English that describes it best, it "stains less" not that it's "rust free" as it's called in many languages.

In Dutch we call it roestvrij staal, directly translated it is "rust free steel" so I guess the original term did catch on in some places ;)

Gun barrels and beer fermenters is really all I need to know to endorse the stuff.

My dad is a retired metallurgist; I love this video. Interesting and well done!

Thoroughly enjoy your presentations . Please keep them coming and I will keep watching.

Hard to find a blemish in this episode. A Stainless-episode

An entire presentation on stainless steel without a single mention of the element NICKEL !!??!! I am at a loss for words and that doesn't happen very often.

When you see how well the arch is welded together you see pure genius at work. I can make a weld that holds but that is art work. Thanks, amazing.

I watched this video to see the history of the Gateway Arch, but the history of stainless steel is fascinating!! Hard to imagine our world without it!!

An early morning upload! Good way to start a day. EDIT: Just finished it. Good story, as always and your delivery which exudes a blatant love for history makes it even better. Thank you for your consistently phenomenal content.

I had no idea you were Stl area! Amazing video and always cool to hear about your home town area and some history behind it!

Thank you, history guy. You deserve a metal for fact of matter and hard evidence.

I loved this segment! I was a senior in high school in 1975, and in my Advanced Metal industrial education class we watched a movie about the planning and construction of the “St. Louis Arch”. It didn’t come close to the amount of information The History Guy packed into this piece! Thank you for the trip down memory lane History Guy!

best infotainment vids - very good voice, you should have a much greater audience

This history guy is awesome.

I worked in Stainless steel for 10 years making Rolls Royce engine casing for ships and planes! We centrifugally cast it in rings and tubes ,so that it avoided welding, making it stronger. Great video.

I went to the Arch when I was in the Air Force, circa 1975. I was stationed at Blytheville Air Force Base, Arkansas. As someone who minored in History at Michigan State I enjoy your videos. Thank you for your service. As for my service, I was a medic.

I had no idea you are from the STL area! I am too and can see the Arch from the bluffs by my house in Edwardsville. Having an archaeology degree from SIUE I have always been blown away by the layers and layers of history (and pre-history ) of the confluence region. I watch this show a lot and really appreciate the amount of information you deliver in a relatively short video. Thanks and hats off to you. p.s. Have you ever looked into the "yellow hammer streetcar" and the connections to Delmar loop and old East St. Louis?

"Stain less, not stain free" Chuckle. The German word for stainless is "rostfrei".

You have a real gift for being able to make any topic interesting and an incredible capacity for useless information. I too have a love of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. That said, this is one of my favorite channels. Keep it up man, you rock!

Always loved history as a school aged kid. Now I'm 66 and "The History Guy" is still making a strong case for history as an intriguing story, In every episode. Keep up the great stories as it truly is history that needs to be remembered !!

The arch is cool and I look forward to seeing the new visitor center. It's worth a visit but the real treasure in St Louis is the City Museum, amazing place.

i believe one of the primary causes of barrel erosion at the time was the primer in the cartridge,coupled with poor cleaning.

The host's enthusiasm and delivery and knowledge could keep me captivated talking about paint drying on a wall

Took my 4 children up in the arch...we all had a great time looking out the windows and running around in that high room... A Great Memory!!! Chuck in Michigan

You should do a video on American Bridge, in their prime, when they were owned by United States Steel, they were the Gods of Ironworking, there will never be another outfit that achieved the heights (no pun intended) that they did, the list of iconic structures that they fabricated and erected is endless.

Interesting, thanks! As a sailor it is hard to imagine life without it! :)

The more History Guy videos I see, the angrier I get at my high school and university history teachers, who simply expected us to memorize politician's names, dates of battles, casualty numbers, and lines on maps.

Hey History guy you're speaking my language! I am an aerospace metallurgical Engineer. I started with ARMCO the developer of most high strength stainless steels. I was able to melt stainless, process through an AOD and pour very large ingots. This was a great presentation.

The History Guy videos are like watching Saturday morning cartoons. When your videos drop, I'm 8 yrs old again on the floor watching.

When I was a kid, I visited HMS Sheffield at Navy Days 1963 in Portsmouth Harbour which had been commissioned in 1937. Sheffield had a very illustrious career in WW2- not least being a great survivor- she was torpedoed by mistake by Royal Navy aircraft searching for the Bismarck- luckily the new type detonators did not work and "The reaction of Sheffield's crew "has not made its way into the official records"' You can imagine what that was- in today's argot- WTF! Anyway, the ship was known as "Shiny Sheff." This was because as Sheffield is the home of stainless steel- HMS Sheffield had most of the brass fittings on her made with stainless steel to eliminate cleaning chores and this included the ship's bell. Sadly, Sheffield deteriorated while in the Reserve Fleet and went for scrap and her sister Belfast- a less storied vessel was preserved. I have to admit, all those years ago I do not recall the stainless steel but I was unaware at that age of Sheffield's special fittings. I do remember being in one of the turrets- very impressive!

Thank you, THG, for reminding us about how staInless steel has become so important in our lives. Another fascinating fifteen minutes.

I cannot tell you how much I have been enjoying your channel since finding it a couple of weeks ago. Thanks for your effort.

"Monument to the Dream" (1967) is a cool video about the construction of the Arch.

The arch has awesome engineering. I went up the elevator in 1973, which by itself is an engineering marvel to keep people vertical all the way to the observation windows at the top.

This guy is fucking awesome. I keep coming back to learn more about history. If history was this interesting when I was a kid in school, I would have become a historian.

Love your work! History without any biased politics! Respect from Ireland! 🇮🇪

They threw stainless steel into everything including the kitchen sink.

Forget sending your kids to college, this channel is all they need!

Stainless steel frets are one of the latest fads of the guitar industry. That’s why I clicked! Plus the quality of all your other videos. And I learned more than expected, as usual.

My Gandfather worked on the Gateway Arch and Busch Stadium. He was a cement Mason. It was pretty cool to be at the top of the arch looking down on the stadium. Standing in something he built looking at something he built. 😊

I like your style of videos. very informative

Some of the steel for the Gateway Arch was fabricated in Des Moines, Iowa by Pittsburg-Des Moines Steel Co. and then barged down the Des Moines river to the Mississippi river to St. Louis.

While this was playing I was in my garage, working with stainless steel tools. What a marvel of ingenuity.

Thanks History Guy for another excellent presentation! I attended the 1964 New York World's Fair and was seriously impressed by all the attractions and glimpses into the future. Especially impressive was the Unisphere constructed by US Steel, and I still have the souvenir medal featuring the Unisphere as part of its design. Thanks for the memories. Wright Flyer, USAF (1968-1972)

Everything I wanted to know about stainless steel, but was afraid to ask.

It's almost like someone would want to build space ships and trucks out this stuff!

My wife and I visited the arch and St. Louis back around July 4 of this year. Very cool place. Very cramped tram ride to the top (I am 6'2" and 310#) I felt like I was in a dryer. Thanks for this channel. You really present a broad array of topics.

I worked for the company that fabricated and erected the St. Louis Arch- Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel Company. The project that I was working on was the construction of stainless steel nuclear fuel rod storage and refueling tanks. I was a 19 year old boilermaker apprentice and learned to work with nuclear power plants building standards. And let me tell you that nuke inspectors have NO sense of humor. In that job, when I was finally laid off, I turned in a tool chest with around 5000 dollars worth of pneumatic tools. And that was in the early 1980's.

This is the second video of yours I've ever seen but something about your tone and cadence makes the buildup to your "deserves to be remembered" catchphrase genuinely exciting!

Ran across this channel today in my feed and now i'm 20 videos deep. Keep up the good work!

Just amazing the things we take for granted, without realizing all the work that went into them.

It's amazing how close the original stainless steel was to the lower limit of chromium for stainless. Under twelve percent chromium simply bonds to iron in the alloy. Over 12% creates free chromium in alloy giving it it's stainless properties. Original alloy 12.5 percent just high enough for variance in production. Higher concentrations of chromium have even better resistance, but generally lower strength and higher cost.

First class, thank you. The history of common technologies is too often ignored, although fascinating, dramatic and with a huge impact on our daily lives.

Terrific program! As usual, packed with information. I seem to learn something new every time I watch you. Nice work. Again.

I went to school with the inventor’s grandson back in Rotherham (which is next door to Sheffield )......

About 5 minutes before flashing a photo of one, I thought "He surely has to include a mention of the stainless steel-bodied DeLorian Motor Car." Which also serves as a good platform if you're building a time machine, btw.

As a native of Kokomo, Indiana I appreciated the mention of Elwood Haynes. The History Guy is great!

Another terrific outing; so glad for this channel and the work you put into it.

This is a very interesting episode! I have always wondered wher Stainless Steel came from and now I know.

Faraday was absolutely brilliant, especially with his work in electrical phenomena

I live in Western KY. My grandfather was one of the workers that worked on the upriver top side of the arch when it was built. He was part of the crew that placed the keystone. He was one of the best welders and fabricators I ever met. His career ended his life at 64.

Thank-you for the history lesson. I found this fascinating because when I moved out of home 20 years ago a neighbour in Australia gave me 3 stainless steal pots from the 1960s from Sheffield, and I've gone through many cheap frying pans but it seems like the pots will last forever.

His employer was uninterested, not disinterested. Judges should be disinterested. The two words are not synonymous. Really good story, thanks.

Fun fact! A lot of the "chrome trim" you see on classic cars is actually stainless steel.