Harry brearley autobiography samples

Introduction

Harry Brearley, though a byword in the Waddell family since the 1920's, or maybe even earlier, has only recently achieved public awareness of his discovery of stainless steel back in 1913, as the recent centenary of this breakthrough brought his name to (modest) fame, at least among the technologically literate sector of society.

The particular fascination of his life story arises firstly in the desperate poverty into which he was born in a backstreet slum of industrial Sheffield in the late Victorian era, sharing a one-room dwelling with four brothers and four sisters.

Plus of course his parents, thoroughly decent and admirable people, both of whom worked – his father (whom Harry described as an expert steel smelter and an expert ale-supper) in a local steel mill and his mother as a laundress.

After the most rudimentary education, he started work at 11, running errands to and fr