Jewish Invention Myths: Stainless Steel
As I have noted before Jewish Invention Myths are often born by taking a jewish contribution to an existing invention and trying to find an angle to claim it as a ‘jewish invention’. A great example of this is the claim that we have jews to thank for the invention of stainless steel.
Stephen Pollard writes in ‘The Jewish Chronicle’ that:
‘We (almost) invented stainless steel. German chemist Hans Goldschmidt first produced carbon-free chromium in 1893. He then patented the thermite reaction, which as an alloy of more than 10 per cent chromium enabled stainless steel to be created in the early 1900s.’ (1)
‘Christian Learning’ expands the claim to be a definite ‘jewish invention’ rather than an ‘almost’ ‘jewish invention’:
‘Unlike ordinary steel, stainless steel is strong enough to combat corrosion, rusting, and staining. Stainless steel can be found today in our own kitchen appliances straight on to architecture in our modern cities and the aircraft that we fly in to travel.
In 1893 the German Jewish chemist Hans Goldschmidt invented the process of producing carbon-free chromium and had the thermite reaction patented in 1895. This discovery was huge for the creation of stainless steel as it is an alloy that is more than 10 percent chromium with a low carbon content. Due to Goldschmidt’s innovation, scientists were able to begin create stainless steel in the early 1900s.’ (2)
While ‘Boulder Jewish News’ just simply claims it. (3)
As with so many ‘jewish inventions’ this is complete and utter nonsense but based on a kernel of fact.
The British were manufacturing razor blades out of chromium steel (an early version of stainless steel) in the 1840s, (4) while the German industrial conglomerate Krupp was making cannons out of the same material in the 1850s. (5) By 1861 Englishman Robert Forester Mushet had officially patented chromium steel in Great Britain, (6) while the German entrepreneur Julius Barr had patented his own version of chromium steel in the United Stated with the explicit intention of building bridges out of it. (7)
This alone would normally be enough to debunk the claim that Hans Goldschmidt ‘created’ stainless steel, but Goldschmidt’s claim for priority needs to be properly situated within the development of stainless steel.
He did indeed create and patent a process using thermite to produce a very low carbon steel, but his discoveries were not made in a vacuum and are located – for example – between the work of Sir Robert Hadfield in England in 1892 and the work of Leon Guillet in France in 1904 which predictably the ‘jewish invention’ claim conveniently forgets to mention! (8)
So, while he contributed to the creation of modern (rather than early) stainless steel (albeit unintentionally since it was the German metallurgists P. Monnartz and W. Borchers who realised the importance of low carbon levels in creating a more resistant steel in 1911 [about which Goldschmidt had no idea!]) (9) he wasn’t the first nor the only person to do so nor did he ‘invent’ modern stainless steel. That was Englishman Harry Brearley in 1912 not Hans Goldschmidt in 1893! (10)
References
(1) https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/did-you-know-that-jews-invented-everything-g0z36e86
(2) https://www.christianlearning.com/jewish-inventions/
(3) https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/
(4) Quentin Skrabec, Jr., 2015, ‘The Metallurgic Age: The Victorian Flowering of Invention and Industrial Science’, 1st Edition, McFarland: Jefferson, p. 83
(5) Ibid., p. 149
(6) Leonard Waldo, 1916, ‘Chrome-Nickel Iron and Steel Products’, Iron Age, Vol. 98, No. 2, p. 838 (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015014665320&view=1up&seq=902)
(7) Skrabec, Op. Cit., p. 149
(8) Harold Cobb, 2010, ‘The History of Stainless Steel’, 1st Edition, ASM International: Materials Park, pp. 11-12; echoed by the British Stainless Steel Association in their timeline: https://web.archive.org/web/20120112001630/http://www.bssa.org.uk/about_stainless_steel.php?id=31
(9) https://web.archive.org/web/20120112001630/http://www.bssa.org.uk/about_stainless_steel.php?id=31
(10) Cobb, Op. Cit., pp. 17-21