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.
Tom Denning, Baron Denning
In "Spartan Steel and Alloys Ltd" v "Martin & Co. Ltd" [1973] 1 QB 27 in 1973 he delivered a leading judgment on the subject of the recovery of pure economic loss in negligence. Spartan Steel were a company that manufactured stainless steel in Birmingham, and their factory was powered by electricity. Less than a mile away from the factory Martin & Co were doing maintenance work on a road when they accidentally unearthed and damaged the power cable providing the factory with electricity. Due to the power being off the factory lost a large amount of money; £368 on damaged goods, £400 on the profits they would have made from those goods and £1,767 for the steel they could not make due to the power outage. The question was what Spartan Steel could claim money for. Martin & Co agreed they were negligent, and offered to pay for the damaged goods and the profit that Spartan Steel would have made on those goods, but refused to pay damages for the steel Spartan Steel could not make due to the power outage. In his judgment Denning agreed that they would only have to pay for losses associated with the damaged goods, not the money lost on the steel that could not be made due to the power outage because it counted as pure economic loss. For public policy reasons Denning would not allow the recovery of pure economic loss, stating in his judgment that: