It comes as no surprise that the first words we have on record about rust are tinged with annoyance. The first known recorded reference to corrosion comes from a Roman general two millennia ago, bemoaning the damage some invisible foe had wreaked on his army’s catapults. Not much later, historian Pliny the Elder speculated that rust was a divinely placed check on humanity’s hubris. Even as speculations moved from metaphysical to empirical, the question of how best to deal with the menace of metal-munching oxidation continues. Journalist Jonathan Waldman takes us through British industrial factories and Rust Belt remains to show us where we’ve been and gives us a few glimpses of where corrosion could gain the upper hand against cities if we fail to recognize our ongoing battle against entropy.

They say the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Thanks to the vigilance of a groundskeeper named David Moffitt, Lady Liberty herself was saved from being one of corrosion’s tragic victims. It began May 10, 1980, when two angst-filled Californians protesting the incarceration of a Black Panther member scaled the Statue of Liberty using suction cups. They unfurled a banner reading “Liberty Was Framed.”

Moffitt lived within walking distance from the monument, and was in charge of her maintenance and the island where she stood. He saw the whole spectacle and called in the NYPD to bring the pair down and to justice. Moffitt despised the vagrants’ contempt for the sacred symbol in trespassing, but he was also worried about the statue’s integrity. He heard metal-on-metal clanging, and assumed the vigilantes were driving climbing spikes into Lady Liberty’s copper shell.

The charges and news reports reflected the assumption that they had damaged government property. The pair denied it, and on closer investigation, the charges had to be dropped. They had used large suction cups to climb, and they had no pitons or hammers among their gear. The banging noise had been a policeman banging the butt of his gun against the inside of Lady Liberty.

The protest did reveal, however, that there were holes in the statue—and lots of them. But corrosion had been the trouble-maker. Moffitt contracted several firms to investigate the statue’s structural integrity. They reassured him there was nothing to be concerned about. Just a few months later, a group of French engineers offered to launch a deeper investigation in a gesture that was almost poetic, as the French had gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States in 1886.

A team of seven engineers from France and America was assembled to ascertain the history and integrity of the world’s tallest iron structure. The team found sketches and handwritten notes from the engineer Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel (after whom Paris’ Eiffel Tower was named). Eiffel had ingeniously designed statues made of iron and copper in such a way that the metals would not touch. If they did, the structure would undergo a process known as galvanic corrosion, in which electrons move from the weaker, more reactive metal (the anode) to the less reactive, more stable metal (the cathode). The weaker metal is destroyed in the process. Batteries undergo galvanic corrosion, which is why they don’t run indefinitely.

The team of engineers discovered that the Statue of Liberty was essentially a giant battery. The insulation separating the copper and iron was worn away. A great deal of water trapped inside of the statue made things worse. Some of the moisture was trapped in the multiple coats of paint applied to the inside. The millions of tourists who had toured the inside of the monument also added moisture, just by exhaling during their visit. Eiffel was clear in his writings that no one was supposed to be inside, but the damage was done. Every piece of the outer shell would have to be replaced in 1,825 segments.  

It took three years (1981-1983) to discover the extent of the damage and determine what would need to be done. It took another three years to get Lady Liberty dressed and ready for her centennial celebration. (The French delivered her to the United States in 1886.) The whole endeavor became a point of national pride. The French-American Committee was absorbed by a larger, more powerful national committee. An enormous fundraising campaign began, garnering over $270 million from organizations as diverse as State Farm, Coca-Cola, and NASA. That’s well over $1 billion when adjusted for inflation.

It was a strenuous, multi-faceted undertaking, full of national pride and turf wars, corporate generosity and shady opportunism, high-minded altruism and self-serving pettiness. One New York ironworkers union protested the fact that a French company got the contract to redo Lady Liberty’s torch. Some companies were ready to donate in exchange for Reagan-autographed commemorative plaques. Some worried that a symbol of freedom was getting pimped out by politicians, union leaders, and CEOs.

But on July 4, 1986, the atmosphere was jubilant. The scaffolding had been removed, and Lady Liberty watched as millions poured into the city and enjoyed a front row seat to the largest fireworks show in history—20 tons worth! There were thousands camping out on Staten Island. The surrounding waterways were teeming with 40,000 boats. The weekend cost nearly $40 million. A third of the world tuned in to observe the festivities.

Amidst the revelry, perhaps no one thought back on the pair of protestors who catalyzed Lady Liberty’s investigation and renovation six years earlier. Perhaps the celebration would not have been what it was without their act of civil disobedience.

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Until the early 1900s, “rustless steel” would have been widely considered a contradiction in terms. Rusting was simply what steel did.

As with so many discoveries and innovations, stainless steel began as a happy mistake. The eureka moment came in 1913 when British metallurgist Harry Brearley (1871-1948) accidentally left some samples of chromium alloyed steel in water overnight while developing erosion-resistant rifle barrels. Brearley returned to the samples surprised to find no discoloration. When he submerged the metal in nitric acid, vinegar, and lemon juice to reveal structural issues (a process called “etching”), he saw that the corrosion was minimal.

Companies showed far less interest in Brearley’s discovery than he expected.

He thought it would make great cutlery, but the knife makers roundly rejected his samples, too. They couldn’t forge, polish, or harden the samples they’d received from him. They christened Brearley “the inventor of knives that won’t cut.”

Undeterred (a word that captures Brearley’s steely resolve throughout his life), he eventually found a soon-to-be very rich man who saw this new steel as worth refining. Brearley realized that this material would do more than cut vegetables. It could be used for pistons, valves, and spindles. The steelworks company Thomas Firth & Sons eventually embraced Brearley’s formula, using his new metal for it’s engine exhaust valves. 

Two years before the British government restricted chromium steel production to  military-related endeavors, Brearley got his hands on over 100 pounds of the stuff for a pittance, which he reworked into knives for friends and family. Recipients were invited to bring back any knives that were rusting, but no one did. They had the composition down to a science.

No one was more obsessed or even in love with steel than Brearley. No other subject earned more narrative space in his autobiography. (He mentioned his son just once, and his wife not at all.) For a man who had given his life to understand steel and see to its purest, highest quality production, it was a blow to be cut out of deals and denied any acknowledgement by the companies to whom he had brought his windfall-producing formula. Thomas Firth & Sons ran ads in 1915 treating stainless steel as their own invention. Brearley’s objections fell on deaf ears for a long time, but he would devote tremendous time and energy fighting for the credit he believed was due him.

As it turned out, neither Brearley nor the company Firth deserved that credit.

Unbeknownst to Brearley, dozens of scientists from across Europe had developed similar corrosion-fighting steel products around that same time. He might have been steel’s most ardent lover, but he wasn’t steel’s one and only. Some Englishmen had already patented non-corrosive alternatives.

It is more a matter of serendipity and Brearley’s iron will than historical fact that Brearley is revered as stainless steel’s inventor and patron saint.

Galvanizing is a process of enhancing a metal’s resistance to corrosion by coating it with a protective layer of zinc. If you were to galvanize an iron bar, for example, you would clean it, submerge it in hydrochloric acid or sal ammoniac, and then dunk it into a boiling Jacuzzi of liquefied zinc: 840 degrees, and four times as viscous as maple syrup.

Zinc has been around for thousands of years in China, India, and across Europe, but the earliest detailing of the galvanizing process we know of was fairly recent—1742. It wasn’t officially patented, however, until 1837.

Most people have no idea what galvanizing is—let alone how useful it is. Part of the problem is that zinc is boring. It doesn’t glitter like gold or diamonds. No one is breaking into vaults looking for zinc or trying to fashion it into high-end jewelry. It’s ordinary enough to be overlooked. But some contend that the costs of our ignorance are extremely high. According to one passionate advocate speaking to a group of engineers, the annual costs of corrosion in the United States are equal to building the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower) 562 times.

Despite the benefits of galvanizing and the drawbacks of letting corrosion go unchecked, most state and city governances have yet to take the option seriously.  Philip Rahrig, head of the American Galvanizers Association (AGA) argues that bureaucrats are short-sighted and stuck in their ways—and the government's way is to paint. Rahrig calls these paint jobs “government propaganda,” a waste of taxpayer dollars that perpetuates the problem rather than dealing with it. The cost of painting and repainting rusty bridges and railings is far higher than coating replacement bolts and beams with zinc. Moreover, upkeep is minimal, unlike the never-ending task of repainting. 

Praise for galvanizing is not unfounded, wishful thinking. There is proof of concept. For one, Europeans, with their far deeper appreciation for preservation of the past, galvanize far more of their structures than Americans do. In the United States, too, though, there are a number of notable case studies. Take America’s oldest galvanized bridge: Stearns Bayou Bridge in Michigan, galvanized in 1966. A team from the AGA examined it three decades later and found the bridge was still in excellent condition. Beams and bolts still had not rusted, and the team expects the bridge to hold for a long time still.

We are a metal world like never before. There is an estimated 400 pounds of steel being put to use for every single person on the planet. And like never before, we have scored some major victories in the battle against rust. Corrosion used to be an irrefutable act of nature, or a scourge the gods permitted to keep humans humble. Now it’s a well-understood scientific phenomenon that engineers have gradually beaten back into a corner. The oxidation process that corrupts metals no longer menaces our machines and contraptions to the degree it used to. Despite our strides, however, the battle is far from over.

Part of the problem is a generational gap. According to experts in the field of corrosion, it is neither a popular nor respected specialty. An older generation of anti-rust wizards understands corrosion processes well and cares more about the fight against rust than younger generations do. Corrosion studies seem passé compared to nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and material engineering. The majority of young ambitious minds would rather send rockets to space than revamp rusted bridges.

Another difficulty in the war against rust is the gap between theory and practice. Engineering is such a niche line of work, full of specialties, and corrosion is so interdisciplinary, that most engineers never even scratch the surface of corrosion research that would enhance the work they produce. As a result, many repeat the same old mistakes when they design bridges and skyscrapers. There remains a yawning chasm between invaluable research and those practitioners who could implement it.

On top of the theory-practice gap, the American tendency is to replace instead of maintain, especially when it comes to our infrastructure like bridges and piping. Different cultural commentators describe this phenomenon as recklessness, a byproduct of a nation with more money than it knows what to do with. Whatever the reasons for this cultural proclivity, it costs the United States not just financially, but also in human lives. A bridge that disintegrates and sends families hurtling toward death and serious injury is not just an engineering failure, but a moral one.

Some are trying to bridge the gap and instill a more humane approach to engineering that captures the bigger picture, coaxing people away from the “my skyscraper’s bigger than yours” culture and developing a more humane metric of success. The idea that bigger is better can get in the way of productions that are beneficial, beautiful, and enduring. One French engineer founded Engineers without Borders for this very reason, in the hopes of "reengineering engineering" for a new generation.

The only way to win the war with corrosion would be to get rid of metal. As long as there is metal there will be war, but we can drastically extend the life of metal through careful maintenance. If New York City were suddenly emptied of any humans and left at the mercy of Mother Nature, the city would be unrecognizable before long. Oxidation would utterly destroy most train bridges in a few decades. The city’s biggest bridges would not last more than a few centuries. Nanotechnology and biotechnology might be the way of the future, but continuing the fight against corrosion is what will keep that way clear and open to us.

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