Stainless Steel & Copper-Cookware Revolutionized

The Revere Company spent years making cookware from the late 1880’s, but during the 1930’s tried to come up with something lighter than the heavy cast iron that was the main source of every day cookware.  Restaurants and people with a lot of money used copper pans with tin lining, but it was expensive to re-tin.  Tin is a very soft metal, almost as soft as aluminum, and a lining was just that, a thin layer inside the copper.

Revere was the first to decide that stainless steel was the overall best material for a cooking surface, and spent over two years developing new production techniques.  Finally they patented a stainless steel cooking surface, with an electroplated copper clad bottom for better heat distribution, and added Bakelite handles.   They applied for the patent in 1938, and introduced “Revere Ware” as we know it today in 1939.

Revere never changed their product materials, although as years went by they used both thinner copper and stainless in their cookware.   When their heavy solid copper/stainless cookware came out in 1967 (which includes the Bicentennial edition in 1976, and signature collection after that), they changed the process a bit.  Rather than simply electro-plating the copper onto the stainless steel, they used two equal sheets of each and pressure bonded them together.

Stainless steel and copper have been the foundation for the growth of the Revere Ware company and much of the history of the evolution of cookware in the 20^th century, and Revere Ware proudly displayed their choice of materials on logos, boxes and labels as long as they made them here in the USA.