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"I long ago realized that I could reach far more people by writing something, than by walking down the street with a banner."
- John Brunner
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| Steelonium | ||
| A remarkable kind of steel that did not rust or corrode. |
This is a very early reference in fiction to what is now called stainless steel.
| "You will notice that there are no cracks or fissures. Steelonium won't rust and is ten times as strong as steel. We now make our streets by putting down large slabs of the metal, six inches thick." |
| Technovelgy from Ralph 124c 41 +,
by Hugo Gernsback. Published by Modern Electrics in 1911 Additional resources -
|
The invention of stainless steel is most often attributed to Harry Bearly, an English inventor, in 1916. Bearly was asked to try to find a steel for gun barrels that would be less subject to corrosion. He found that adding chromium to low carbon steel enhanced its corrosion resistance. Stainless steel flatware has been used since 1920; it wasn't widely used in homes until a decade later. Stainless steel sinks were popular in the 1930's. See also the interesting comment by reader Daedelus.
Stainless steel literally "stains less" because the chromium in the steel combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form a thin, invisible layer of chrome-containing oxide, called the passive film. (The same thing happens with aluminum railings, etc.; aluminum oxide, the passive film on the surface of the metal, is completely clear and very strong.) The sizes of chromium atoms and their oxides are similar, so they pack neatly together on the surface of the metal, forming a stable layer only a few atoms thick. The corrosion resistance of stainless steel is dependent on oxygen to "repair" the passive layer on the surface; that's why if you leave stainless steel flatware in water for a few days, you can still get some corrosion (rust) on the surface of the flatware.
Compare to herculoy from The Howling Bounders (1949) by Jack Vance,
ultron from Armageddon: 2419 A.D. (1928) by Philip Frances Nowlan,
permalloy from Fugitives From Earth (1939) by Nelson S. Bond,
magnalloy from The Cave of Horror (1930) by S.P. Meek,
helio-beryllium from Out Around Rigel (1931) by Robert H. Wilson, and
plasteel from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Ralph 124c 41 +
More Ideas
and Technology by Hugo Gernsback
Tech news articles related to Ralph 124c 41 +
Tech news articles related to works by Hugo Gernsback
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
| Omniphobic Liquid-like Surfaces And de Camp's Telelubricator (1940) |
| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
| Do We Still Need Orbiting Factories? |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
