AISI's Steelmark Gains Extensive Coverage

Robert (Bob) Sexton, middle, with his boss, Bob Newell, right, and Newell's son enjoy large-scale steelmark that made it on to the Steelers helmets back in 1962.

The Pittsburgh Steelers' win over Seattle for the Super Bowl title was not only big for the Steel City itself, but for AISI, whose Steelmark (four-pointed starlike figures within a circle), appears on the helmets of the team. "The Story Behind The Pittsburgh Steelers Logo," which AISI released to the media weeks prior to the Bowl, received extensive coverage, making it into Associated Press, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Northwest Times of Indiana, The Fabricator, Detroit Free Press and The Business Journal, and included coverage on Washington's W-TOP Radio, among others. We also learned that the story ran in Mental Floss—"a delightfully eccentric and eclectic new magazine devoted to educating Americans about all the stuff they should have learned in school but didn't," according to The Washington Post (Peter Carlson). We are glad the word is spreading.

The AISI also heard from Pittsburgh native, Barbara Sexton, who wrote in about how the idea to use AISI's Steelmark as the logo of the Pittsburgh Steelers originated in their hometown. Her late husband, Robert Sexton, was a young Republic Steel employee who worked in the Pittsburgh office of the Cleveland-based company and came up with the idea of placing the steelmark on the Steeler's helmet, she wrote us. That was back in 1962—and now, 44 years later, the strength of steel and its mark is still resonating with Steelers' fans all over the world. For more information, contact Elizabeth Vago.