A Short Story of Stainless Steel and Cheerios That Don't Taste like Pewter
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Image: Donovan Govan
Technology
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One relatively recent innovation that not many people think about is the fact that we can't taste spoons. Think about it. That is extremely convenient. Pewter spoons have a taste, steel spoons have a taste, spoons hewn from wood all have a flavor they impart on everything you eat. It wasn't until stainless steel that was had truly tasteless utensils. Stainless steel was not only one of the most important alloys developed, but it almost wasn't discovered by a person called Harry Brearley.
Brearley was a metallurgist working in the early 1900's, who was tasked with finding an alloy better suited to make gun barrels. In his shop, he would make alloy after alloy with many different metals, and after testing them for hardness and gun barrel suitability, he would cast them into a corner of his shop where they would pile up for weeks before he found the time or will to discard them. As he was disposing of one such pile of rusty gun barrels, he noticed one that was still as bright and flawless as the day he produced it.
Working backwards, he was eventually able to trace back that gun barrel to an alloy of steel and a substance called chromium. In a plain steel gun barrel, the steel reacts with oxygen in the air, creating iron III oxide, better known as rust. The rust layer will eventually peel off, exposing more bare steel underneath, which then undergoes the same process. This is why rust can eat through metal so effectively. Not so with the alloy of steel and chromium. The chromium in the metal interacts with the oxygen in the air to create a chemically inert substance called chromium oxide. This layer of chromium oxide that forms on the surface of the barrel does not peel away, and effectively stops the process of rusting. Best of all though: chromium oxide is non toxic and does not have a taste. Hoorah! Tasteless utensils!
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