Yorkshire and the Humber
Stainless steel was invented in 1913 by Harry Brearley of Sheffield, working for Firth Brown Steels (now called Sheffield Forgemasters). SAE 304 stainless steel is the most common stainless steel today, invented by Dr William Herbert Hatfield FRS in 1924 at Firth-Vickers known as Staybrite 18/8, a chromium-nickel steel. Many Swiss watches were mostly made out of Staybrite.
Firth Brown Steels
As with many inventions there is an element of luck in the finding of a new type of steel and it is just so with stainless steel. With the coming together of Firth and Brown to build a joint research facility (Brown Firth Laboratories) in 1908, a project was instigated to study one of the problems affecting armaments production. In charge of this was Harry Brearley. The problem concerned the erosion of the internal surfaces of gun barrels and Brearley was charged with finding a suitable material which would offer better resistance to the erosion caused by high temperatures and he began to examine the addition of chromium to a standard carbon steel.