Invention Playlist 4: Barbed Wire

You may very well encounter barbed wire everyday -- and, in all likelihood, you see THROUGH this flesh-ripping barrier. Where did this invention come from? How did it change the world? Robert and Joe discuss “the devil’s rope” in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(02:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
today we're gonna be talking about barbed wire, which which
for me, it's it's interesting to just think about how
varied our thoughts can be just basic word association with
barbed wire, because when when I just instantly think of
the word without a lot of prepping, you know, of
course I think of barbed wire barriers often. Uh. In particular,

(02:37):
I think about barbed wire that is uh like in
the woods, uh, you know, wrapped around old trees, and
the it kind of grow the tree has grown around
the barbed wire in this kind of grotesque way, but
also the the tree is kind of conquering the barbed wire,
So I think of that. I of course think of

(02:57):
metal fences, the tops of metal fences, particularly to keep
people out of say industrial areas. You see that a
lot in the urban environment. And then of course I
think about its use and say hell Raised or horror films,
you know, even Horizon, or of course the violent stunts
that you see perpetrated sometimes in professional wrestling. I definitely

(03:18):
assumed there was a pro wrestling angle that led you
to this topic. Yeah, well no, no, I wouldn't say
that that led me to the to the topic. I'm
not sure what exactly, you know, I can't remember what
made me think this would be a good one to
look into. Um, probably I mean, part of it could
be just the fact that there is barbed wire everywhere.
We we tend to not see it even as we

(03:39):
see it. And I mean part of that is just
the nature of say a barbed wire fence or or
or a cyclone fencing. This top with barbed wire is that,
of course you can see through it, you can see
what's on the other side. To a certain extent. It
is it is almost invisible, but yet it is there,
and it is uh, you know, if you've stopped to
really think about it, it's it's quite an oppressive presence

(04:01):
to have in the world around you. It's peak hostile architecture. Yeah,
because you know, just to go a little deeper, um,
in terms of associating barbed wire with what it's been
used for, I mean, we we have to realize that
it's been used to divide up the natural world and
enforce artificial barriers to both wildlife and humans. It's been

(04:22):
used to enforce contested borders. It was used to create
the physical barriers of Nazi prisoner of war camps, and
most infamously of all, the fences of concentration and death
camps during the Holocaust. It's used to enclose human prisoners,
and in all of its uses against humans and with
human populations, I mean, it carries with it the threat

(04:43):
of ripped and torn flesh. It doesn't just prevent you
from crossing, It threatens you. I mean it says not
just like I'm going to make it hard for you
to get past this point, but it says you will
get injured if you try to get past this point.
It will be difficult and or unpleasant. Uh, So you'd
better stay on your side of the fence, your side
of the barbed wire. Now, all that is, you know,

(05:04):
kind of dark and grotesque and oppressive and so forth. Um,
but the entire episode is not necessarily going to be
as grim. Barbed wire has a pretty fascinating history, uh,
in the United States and in Europe. And we'll get
into that even as we discuss its its uses and
and also some of the times and places where people
tried to make it a little more a little tamer,

(05:26):
I guess, But generally, barbed wire is still going to
be barbed wire, uh, no matter how you twist it.
So as usual, let's first talk about what came before
barbed wire. Okay, I figured this is a good place
to call out one of the main sources that we're
going to be referring to in this episode, which was
a good chapter on the history of barbed wire in

(05:47):
a book called The Devil's Rope, A Cultural History of
barbed Wire by Alan Krell, who is an associate professor
at the School of Art History and Art Education at
the University of New South Wales. And a lot of
this book is actually more in the kind of art
history realm. It is talking about symbolism and stuff, but
but he also he works Jesus of Nazareth into the

(06:10):
first chapter. Well, it's interesting when you look at like
the early days of barbed wire, what was the closest
precedent you might find in the imagery around you for
this twisted, thorny strand of material. It was probably going
to be like the crown of thorns that you would
see on Jesus's head in medieval artwork. Yeah, yeah, so,

(06:30):
so it's really is a natural transformation to go from, uh,
from a crown of thorns to potentially, you know, like
crown of barbed wire, which is the author points out,
like you see this kind of imagery thrown around even
in the early literature about barbed wire. So uh, for
the most part, we're talking about inventions and innovations of

(06:51):
the nineteenth century here. Prior to the nineteenth century, humans
obviously had a robust collection of barrier technologies up their sleeves.
Wall in fence technologies extend back to two ancient times,
and we mentioned a lot of this in our previous
invention episode on walls. Among the earliest known defensive walls
are the ancient walls of Mesopotamia, specifically those constructed in

(07:14):
the twenty first century BC by this by the Sumarrian
rulers Shulgi and Shu sin Uh. And of course this
would refer to the earliest like territorial border wall we
can find evidence of now. Like if you're just talking
about defensive walls for like castles or towns or buildings,
that's much much older. That's going to go back many centuries. Yeah.

(07:35):
And as for fencing itself, and it is in the
construction of fences as opposed to full on walls. Uh.
The ancient history here is also murky and impossible to
nail down. I was looking at old fences in Archaeology
by Arnie Innarison, presented at the eighty fourth Annual Meeting
of the Society for American Archaeology, and the author points

(07:56):
out that fences are just a prominent feature of most
cultural landscapes, and that they frequently play into land division
and on farm grazing management. So, you know, it stands
to reason that we can we can, roughly, I guess,
think of fencing as a product of the agricultural revolution.
But on the other hand, nomadic herdsmen seemingly made use
of animal pins and essentially fences as well in their

(08:19):
temporary settlements. So it really goes back far in human history.
There is no you know, no individual person or culture
we can point to and say, hey, they came up
with fencing. Yeah, and I think when you go back
farther into history, most fencing is going to be for
the control of animals rather than for the control of humans. Yeah,

(08:40):
you're talking about just mild barriers to make managing your
your various domesticated animals a little easier. So let's fast
forward a bit all the way to nineteenth century see
America and Europe, but specifically America, because this is where
we encounter the the European settler's dream of manifest destiny,

(09:01):
the idea that here is the American frontier spread before us,
and it is it is ours for the taking by
divine right. And part of this, uh, this whole vision,
of course, is the idea that you just have these
these vast empty stretches of land. Right. Of course, in reality,
these lands were far from unoccupied. Uh. There were of
course animals living there, as with any you know, any

(09:22):
of the continents, you have large megafauna that that required
large areas to roam around in. But you also had
native people's that had lived here for at least fifteen
thousand years. But in spite of all that, you know,
it was decided that everybody was going to get a
chance to have a piece of this unclaimed frontier. So,

(09:43):
as Eleanor Commins outlined in a Brief History of barbed
Wire for Popular Science, Abraham Lincoln's Homestead Act of eighteen
sixty two opened it up for any American to claim
uh one sixty acres of public land per citizen. All
you had to do is go out there claim and
of course, what are you gonna do, Maybe throw a
fence around it. And so the land was divided, The

(10:04):
land was worked and transformed, and if you're looking to
keep animals on your property uh and or keep other
animals off of it, it does pay to build some fences.
But while the American Frontier wasn't all empty planes and
you know barren, uh, you know, the Great American Desert
and so forth, there are still plenty of areas where
there is a lack of trees and wood. And therefore

(10:25):
it made traditional fences a difficult proposition. And it also took,
you know more, It took longer than was comfortable in
many cases to gross a hedgerows to serve as natural barriers.
And so settlers begin to experiment with the use of
wire for fencing. And this makes sense, right You use
less wood uh and or depend on fewer post trees

(10:45):
this way. Plus, despite the weight metal, wire travels rather well. Yeah,
wire is a pretty natural solution here. Wire fencing is
less likely to be harmed by the weather. It doesn't
get blown down by high winds because it doesn't have
a flat side to catch the ales. It doesn't get
weighed down by snow in the winter. It doesn't catch
fire if it gets struck by lightning. Wire fencing is

(11:07):
kind of a perfect solution for the planes. Yeah, and
it you know, it doesn't last forever, but it it
certainly stands the test of time. I mean, I feel
like a lot of my childhood involved encountering old wire
fences or barbed wire fences that no longer have any purpose.
They're just there in the woods or you know, and
they're just they have survived, while everything else is just

(11:29):
a ghost of of whatever settlement it was a part of.
It was one of my favorite kinds of things to
discover as a could kid, you know, roam through the
woods and you'd find like a half buried old barbed
wire fence. Yeah, it's like that, maybe a sunken grave,
and of course, you know like a line of of
buttercups that still come up marking some walkway to a

(11:51):
lost house of some sort. But there is a downside
to wire fences, which is that they're not super strong,
especially if you know, they might be strong for a
human to try to get through. But imagine you are
a bull or a bison. Yeah, large animals like this,
a cow, bison, a horse, they can simply tear into it,

(12:12):
make a mess of it, and maybe get tangled up
in it. But in the fence itself would be reduced
to shambles and would no longer serve its purpose. And
and of course, if you were at all concerned about humans,
you know, a wire fence like this is not going
to really be uh, you know, any kind of an
obstacle for humans either. So they quickly realized what was
lacking here spikes, right, passive weapons, just just some static

(12:36):
pokers to sit there and hurt you if you if
you press too hard. So an American farmer and businessman
named Joseph Glidden is often given credit for the invention
of barbed wire, and he does play a very important
role in the history of barbed wire, But it looks
like there were a number of inventions of similar types
of fencing material before Glidden swooped in. So we really

(12:58):
need to take a pretty large step back before we
get to Glitten. So we will get to him in
a bit. One of the first things I thought we
should mention, since we're still sort of in the what
came before phase, is the idea of live fencing or
live fence. Specifically, a species of plant known as Maclura palmifera,

(13:18):
commonly known as the osage orange or the hedge apple. Tree.
You ever seen a hedge apple? Oh? Yeah, yeah, they're
fun to kick down the road. Yeah. I never tried
to eat one. I wonder what they taste like. I
don't know, I never tried. I bet they're nasty. This
was a thorny hedge plant that could be and was
used as a kind of natural barbed wire to form

(13:39):
boundaries and barriers, but it had many problems. You could
try to align your fields with osage orange, but it
was difficult to maintain. It required a lot of trimming,
like it can you know, shoot out big branches all
over the place, and it in in Krell's words, quote
harbored noxious weeds. So the question is can you recreate

(13:59):
some of the desirable qualities of this thorn hedge through
industrial means or synthetic means. And despite the historical association
between barbed wire and the American ranch land Frontier, it
seems that a number of French inventors preceded the Americans.
There were at least two French patents on barbed wire

(14:19):
that came before any patents in America, and then another
one that came before most patents in America. So let's
let's look at France for a second. Right now. Now,
I will point out though that the Krell doesn't seem
to think that there's necessarily any connection between the French
and the American inventions. They have came up come up
with these independently. So imagine it's one of those things
you can you can ultimately explain just in terms of

(14:43):
the material science reaching a point where people could could
innovate with it, or the demand whether there be a
situation where this suddenly appears useful, right, And what's fascinating
here is that the way that it's useful varies pretty
greatly from Europe to the America's that's right. So in
the year eighteen sixty, there was a Frenchman named Lance

(15:05):
Eugene Grassain Batilon who acquired a patent for quote, grating
of wire work for fences and other purposes. And I've
got an illustration for you to look at here, Robert.
But this consisted of quote, a system of twisted iron
employing a flat thin wire known commercially as ribbon iron

(15:26):
that could be applied to everything that ought to be
enclosed or fenced. And this Krell says, this would include
railing for parks, railroads, meadows, gardens, pavilions, and even trees. Like, God,
imagine that world, you know, it's just a barbed wire
fence for every tree. Yeah. Like, if it's not clear

(15:49):
already that the focus here is not so much on
wandering cattle but on people, yes, uh. And Krell says
that most historians have kind of ignored Grassain Batylon, but
his was the first to describe the common features of
twisted wire with sharp projections. Grassian Battalon called these projections
bristling points, and Krell is careful to point out that

(16:12):
gb here didn't describe the material as something that you
would make fencing out of, but rather as something that
would be mounted on top of a normal fence to
make it harder to climb over, which is exactly how
we see barbed wire used, and of course its cousin
razor wire used today, something you can put at the
very top of a non barbed fence, like you know,

(16:34):
cyclone fencing, etcetera, to make it difficult to climb over. Right,
So you want to put fencing around all the trees
in your city or something, you put this on top
of the fence around all the trees. Beautiful, But after this,
there were more frenchmen to follow with ideas for barbed wire.
There was another guy named Louis Francois Janine who was
awarded a patent in April eighteen sixty five. So five

(16:55):
years later, uh was awarded a patent for barbed wire
of a kind of different design. Here, the fence would
consist of double twisted wire with diamond shaped barbs made
out of flat pieces of sheet metal. So this isn't uh,
this isn't gonna be a little like poker sticking out
like thorns. This is going to be more like sharp

(17:17):
flat pieces of metal embedded in the wire as it
goes along, sort of little diamond shaped blades. Yeah. Well,
one of the really interesting things to come out of
researching this episode was just that how many different types
of barbed wire have been devised? Hundreds? Yeah, it's it's
it's amazing, And we'll get more into some of the
variety as we go here. I mean I think there

(17:37):
were hundreds just between like eighteen sixty seven and eighteen
seventy four. So uh So, a later patent was filed
by a brick manufacturer from Brittany, And not to be confusing,
if you don't know. Brittany is in western France. It's
not in Brittain. Uh, Brittany and Western France. And this
guy was named Gilbert Gavellard. This was granted in August

(17:59):
eighteen six seven, and it was for Gavellard's Brevede and Vinchon,
which describes a fence composed of Runt says, oh my,
my French has failing me here. Run says artificial, meaning
artificial thorns. There would be things that would be uh
quote caught between three strands of intertwined wire. Uh. This

(18:21):
brings to mind a description that that Krell shares. He
he He discusses the powerful Washburn and Mowan manufacturing company
out of Massachusetts, which was a big like, a major
producer of barbed wire and of course a major marketer
of barbed wire. They put put out some some gloriously
over the top descriptions of of barbed wire, the perfect fence,

(18:45):
And one of the quotes from the Perfect Fences quote,
the steel barb is nothing more than a thorn. The
spur the animal instantly retreats from and thereafter carefully avoids. Yeah,
it is compared to a thorn, again and again, emphasis
on the natural Uh. I was about to say, the
natural nature, the the natural nous of the thorn. Michael

(19:08):
Kelly of New York, who received a patent for a
barbed wire design on February eleven, eight sixty eight, writes
of his invention quote, my invention relates to imparting defenses
of wire a character approximating to that of a thorn hedge.
I prefer to designate the fence so produced as a
thorny fence. And you know, you read these arguments, and

(19:31):
what could be more natural? You're not making something grossly
artificial um and industrial. No, You're you're taking something that
the world does naturally, that vegetation does naturally, and just
applying it a little more towards your specific aim. Well, yeah,
I wonder if Gressaint Battalan was anticipating somebody like me
who's horrified by the idea of a barbed wire fence

(19:54):
around every tree, because when he's talking about his proposal
for tree guards, he writes the they quote maybe of
double ribbon wire, which allows the addition of small wire points,
and when these ribbons are twisted together, the wire points
bristle in every direction and form spikes, imitating thorn branches.
It's just saying it's like another part of the tree.

(20:14):
It's just like a plant. Yeah, you can well imagine
him today saying naturally, trees grow upward and uh and
reach towards the heavens. Why not also helped transmit wireless
signals for our telephones? What could be more natural? Uh? Huh.
But it's funny, I mean, and we're not even really
brushing the surface of all the different marketing materials and

(20:36):
patents and uh and advertisements and everything that described barbed
wire as a thorn, that they were obsessed with this
idea that it's just like a thorn bush, it's just
like a brier. And I wonder if I wonder where
a lot of these comparisons are coming from. I think
some of it must be coming from like trying to

(20:56):
make it seem more humane, more natural, less like some
kind of gross metal claw that's invading your environment. Right.
And then some of the literature, too, is really just
pressing just how cultured it is, how essential it is
to have fencing. The fencing is the thing that separates

(21:16):
us from the savages, which you know, as um as
Krall points out, as just you know, steeped in the
language of of of of you know, European colonists. Yes,
And Krell also shows these advertisements from the time that
that sort of envisioned barbed wire as the demarcation line
of a kind of controlled arcadia where he where he

(21:38):
would depict people walking along lanes where they would be
surrounded by beautiful plants. And then also just like menageries
of animals all mixed together, like elephants and camels and
horses and dogs and stuff, all in the same pins,
but they're all separated from these lanes by this elegant
looking barbed wire. And so it's like, I don't know,

(22:01):
it's it enforces this theme of like man versus beast
and humankind versus nature, and we contame it and put
it in the box and control it with these artificial
with these industrial thorns, these thorns of human ingenuity. Yeah,
there's one point where Krell is dealing with this, uh,
this illustration by one of the barbed wire um master's

(22:26):
uh there of a of a cow trying to eat
an apple but is prevented from reaching that apple in
this you know, otherwise, you know, a pristine garden environment
by barbed wire fencing, which he compares then to the
Garden of Eden and the and the you know, the
tree of knowledge of good and evil and so forth,
which which is maybe a bit of a stretch, but

(22:49):
but still I like the argument. If we just had
one of those tree guards in the garden, there wouldn't
have been a fall, right, Yeah, the fences order and
uh and in the opposite of order is chaos. Right,
So maybe we should take a quick break and then
we come back. We can explore the year that the
that the damn broke on the barbed wire flood. Today's

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we're back. So, as we mentioned earlier, you had the

(25:06):
Homestead Act of eighteen sixty two that really opened up
the the American the Great American desert. And it's in
the wake of this that we began to to see
this this real uh, this real rush right right. Uh.
It seems that something happened around the year eighteen sixty seven,
because that's the year that a ton of barbed wire
patents began popping up in the United States. We mentioned

(25:27):
that the first patent was in France in eighteen sixty
there was another one in eighteen sixty five, and then
in eighteen sixty seven the American floodgates open. There were
so many barbed wire patents and designs that that popped
up between around eighteen sixty seven and running into the
mid eighteen seventies. And again we we mentioned earlier some
of the demands that might have put pressure on this invention.

(25:50):
You've got the continued colonization of the western prairie lands,
the desire for farmers to keep animals in and or
keep animals out of their fields in a place where
lumber was scarce and the weather could easily damage a
solid wooden fence. Anyway, wire fencing was kind of this
perfect solution, and then the barbs. Meanwhile, we're there to
discourage animals from knocking down the wire fencing. So who

(26:12):
were some of these early American inventors of the industrial thorn.
There are honestly too many to name here, but just
to mention a few, there was a guy named Alfonso
Dab of Elizabeth Port, New Jersey, and he got a
patent in April eighteen sixty seven for an improvement in
pickets for fences and walls. And this would be like

(26:33):
you've got a wrought iron mounting strip and you could
put this on top of an existing fence or an
existing wall, and this would be too in in Dab's words, quote,
stop juveniles or others from climbing them. So these are
these are anti human spikes that you would put on
top of a fence. And you attached to a picture

(26:56):
of this for our notes here, And really they look
more like spearheads, their bayonets or something to that effect,
less like like anything we would identify as barbed wire. Yeah,
these are less for agriculture. These are something that would
go on top of an existing fence and they would
poke your butt if you tried to climb over. Uh.
And then in the same year but a little a

(27:16):
few months Later, in June eighteen sixty seven, a Lucien B.
Smith of Kent, Ohio came up with a barbed wire invention,
which Smith describes thus lee quote posts of cast iron
between which two or more stout wires are strung tightly,
which wires are provided with spools a few feet apart,

(27:36):
and protected with short projecting points um. And this is
so quote offensive. This kind can be constructed very cheaply
and will turn animals readily, as they can see it
better than the ordinary wire fence, which has nothing attached
to the wires to attract attention. And the animals will
not counter the spurs or the spools, So this is

(27:56):
kind of interesting. Smith is saying. Not only will these
spurs poke the animals if they press against the fence
and and deter them there, it will also make the
fence more visible to the animals, so that they won't
need to poke up against it brush against it by accident.
They'll be able to see it more easily than they
would see just plain smooth wire. And another early American

(28:18):
patent for something counting as a barbed wire fence belonged
to an inventor named William D. Hunt of New York
in This was awarded in July eighteen sixty seven. The
design here is a little bit different from the barbed
wire we're familiar with. It was conceived as a farming
and ranching innovation, and from Hunt's patent, he describes it
as quote, the spurs fit the wire loosely so as

(28:41):
to revolve easily upon it. By providing the wire with
these sharp spur wheels, animals are deterred from pushing against
the fence or attempting to break over it. And so
this would not be twisted wire forming little artificial thorns,
but rather it would be a smooth wire along which
are strung like b eads, these little kind of like

(29:02):
sow blade looking things that can rotate freely around the wire,
and then they would be held basically in place by
the little studs on the wire. Yeah, kind of like
little ninja throwing stars. Right. And you know this one also,
this one looks kind of neat actually the illustration, and
I can imagine it being kind of, you know, shiny
and decorative if it was deployed in a way that

(29:24):
would you know, perhaps be pleasing to the eyes. But
also coming back to that previous point, perhaps highly visible
to animals. Yeah, and I think this might actually be
a slightly more humane version of barbed wire. I'm not
sure because I haven't tried it myself, but it would
still provide a painful resistance if say, cows tried to
press up against it. But because the sharp spur rotates

(29:46):
freely around the wire, it seems a lot less likely
than the barbed wire were used to to catch and
tear skin. Does that make sense? Like it's not a
hook going into you. It's just a sharp little thing.
And and the fact that it wrote hates means it
you know, it might hurt to press against it, but
it's not going to stay in you. Now, there's a
great thing that's quoted in Krell's book, which is Hunt

(30:08):
describing his inspiration for the invention, which was basically he
had had trouble with a very stubborn mule, and he said, quote,
I made up my mind that one young mule couldn't
beat me. So one day the idea suggested itself to me. Somehow,
I don't know as I can tell how that a
wire fence might be bird as I called it, then

(30:28):
barbed as it has been changed too since, And I
thought it would make a good thing. The reason why
I thought so was that this mule would press against
a thing and stand so obstinate. It would hang against
the board of a fence, and I thought, if I
had something sharp, he wouldn't crowd it so hard. H
So bird fencing colon a good thing. Well, at least

(30:50):
a hunt it was, you know, when you got a
stubborn mule. But there are many problems with the early
designs for barbed wire fencing. A lot of these designs
beginning in eighteen sixty seven might have been effective if
they were used, but there were problems with the production.
The barbs had to be created and placed along the
wire by hand, and this was extremely laborious, potentially dangerous

(31:13):
or painful for the worker. It would have made production
of the wire slow and expensive because you're basically having
to make a necklace every time he's stringing up some
some wire, if you're having to beat it with these
little sharukans and so forth. Right, So, the next major
revolution in barbed wire, I think, was less about how
effective the specific wire design was at controlling animals and

(31:36):
more more about how the design could be mass produced.
And this is where Joseph Glidden comes in. This is
where everything seems to change. In the year eighteen seventy four,
Joseph Glidden patented the first design for barbed wire that
would ever become a huge commercial success. According to Krell,
in eighteen seventy four, just about ten thousand pounds of

(31:59):
barbed wire where produced and sold. Six years later, in
eight eight, that figure was more than eighty million pounds. Uh,
there's a there's a great line from Glinden's marketing. Uh.
He claimed that this his wire was quote lighter than air,
stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust. Well, that taps into

(32:20):
another thing that I think is common in barbed wire marketing,
which is, I think pretty straightforward appeals to kind of
masculinity marketing. There's like very gendered marketing with barbed wire,
you know what I mean. Well, I mean it was
it was pretty obvious that it was going to be
a male audience that was going to be buying this
barbed wire for for a variety of reasons. But yeah,

(32:41):
there's this whole again, the man versus nature attaming of
the wilderness um for the most part, but we will
get into a major divide on that as we move forward. Sure,
So what was Glinden's mass production method. Well, it involved
taking two strands of wire and twisting them around each
other while barbs were automatically strung along one one of

(33:05):
the two wires and then held in place by the
wrapping of the second wire. It's a pretty ingenious method. Yeah,
it's it's basically an example of what we we come
to see as the standard in barbed wire, and that
is the sense of barbed wire is a kind of
not that is formed as opposed to something that is
manufactured by the beating of spikes and so forth. Exactly. Yeah, Now,

(33:26):
there was a huge amount of legal battling over barbed
wire patents, but Glidden managed to come out ahead in
all of this with his mass production method. His barbed
wire not was also pretty straightforward. By the way, about
the legal battle, there is a whole history here with
this sort of battle royal that all these various American
individuals will get into that in a minute. I was

(33:48):
actually I was running across articles in the New York
Times from the day where they were had updates to
the legal battle. Yeah, it was a crazy drama. And
we'll even get to some poetry about that drama in
a minute. Uh. Now, there's another interesting fact here, which
is that there are some versions of the story that
point out Joseph Glynden's wife, Lucinda Warren Glidden's role in this. Apparently,

(34:10):
Lucinda helped Joseph figure out the process that would set
his barbed wire apart. So first, Glinton used his wife's
hairpins to twist sharp points that he tried to attach
to a piece of straight wire. But like many other
barbed wire inventors before him, he came across a problem,
which was that the hairpin barbs kept slipping down the

(34:30):
length of the wire. They couldn't be held in place.
So to describe what happened next, I'm gonna quote from
Krell quote. Turning next to a coffee meal retrieved from
their kitchen, Glinden converted it in such a way that
by cranking it he could produce a uniform barb. The
problem of the sliding barbs was finally resolved when he
hit upon the idea that a second wire might secure

(34:53):
them if it were twisted around the first. To this end,
he converted an old grindstone into a rudimentary twisting advice
and with the help of Lucinda, who turned the grindstone
while he held the wire, proceeded to make the first
sixty six feet of barbed wire in their backyard. Also,
thank you, husband for turning every device in our house

(35:13):
into a barbed wire construction method. Yeah. From then on,
the coffee taste like barbed wire. Now. Another interesting individual
in all this was John Warrene bet a Million Gates boy,
so named because it said that he'd take bets on
whether cows could break through his wire. Uh. And apparently
there was some criticism that he was maybe using really

(35:34):
lazy cows or and I was reading some sort of
back and forth in this, but either way he became
quite rich off the product, though he engaged apparently at
times in the sale of quote moonshine wire uh, which
if I'm understanding correctly, would have been like kind of
like bootleg design wires barbed wire recipes that he wasn't

(35:55):
actually uh you know, legally supposed to be selling. The
amount of anguish over bootleg or like scalped barbed wire
is one of the most shocking things I discovered in this.
Like there there was great passion about the intellectual property
disputes of barbed wire in the eighteen seventies and eighties.
And and this is because Glidden was not the only

(36:16):
person to invent to invent a barbed wire in the
eighteen seventies, or or to invent an effective mass production
system for barbed wire. There was another inventor named Jacob
Haese who came up with a similar process to Glinten's
in the same year, but Glidden won the legal battle
over precedence. In fact, there were at least three inventors.
So you had Glidden, you had Jacob hash and then

(36:38):
there was a hardware dealer named Isaac L. L Wood,
who were all involved in a long running I P
dispute after they each tried to file patents for barbed wire.
After the three of them all visited the Decab, Illinois
County Fair of eighteen seventy three, where the three of

(36:59):
them all saw a display by a guy named Henry
Rose which included a long strip of wood that had
barbs attached to it, which could be used to keep
an animal from pressing against defense. And so all three
of them looked at this idea of Roses so like
a long wooden dowel with barbs on it. All three

(37:19):
of them independently had the idea that it would make
more sense to do the same thing but put the
barbs on a length of wire instead of a wooden rod.
And then all three set to work trying to acquire
a patent, and Glinden just happened to turn out the
big winner of this long and acrimonious dispute. But I
think it's funny that like they're all fighting, they're fighting
each other, and like they all basically got the idea

(37:42):
from this other guy that they just all had the
insight that wire would work better than a than a
wooden rod. But at some point the defeated inventor Jacob Hayes,
who you know, who lost this intellectual property battle to
Joseph Glinton. He wrote a poem called be as Happy
as you Can that is quoted in Krell's book. This
is so good, This life is not all sunshine as

(38:05):
barbed fence scalpers have found. The crosses they bear are heavy,
and under them lies no crown. And while they're seeking
the roses, the thorns full offt they scan. Yet let them,
though they're wounded, be as happy as they can. It's
like the Bobby Fuller four's letter dance of barbed wire,

(38:27):
and in this we do have the crown of Christ's
damagery as well. Absolutely, But what comes out of this
is that Glidden's version of barbed wire is probably correctly
understood to be the progenitor of most existing types of
barbed wire today. Yeah. In summary via Crell, it is
accurate to say that barbed wire quote was born in France,

(38:48):
independently conceived in the Eastern States of America, New Jersey, Ohio,
and New York, and grew up on the prairies and
plains where for different reasons, farmers especially and later ranchers
turned increasingly defensing. All right, we're gonna take a break,
but when we come back, we will continue to discuss
barbed wire, and we'll even get into one or two

(39:09):
examples of barbed wire used in a way that we
might well describe as I don't know, not evil. Yeah,
I think that would be accurate. Give us the attention,
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Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. So
there are again many different varieties of barbed wire and
and one book that is that is often mentioned in
uh in writings about the history of barbed wire is

(41:46):
a book that was published in nineteen seventy seven titled
The bobbed Wire Bible That's Bombed b O B B
E D by Jack Glover published in seventy seven, and
I think earlier as well. And I think maybe the addition.
I was looking at for list from seventy seven, and
it contains illustrations of seven hundred and thirty four different
steel barbed wire knots, including things like scuts, wooden block,

(42:10):
and the shin round line lock barb uh and uh.
If you if you can find a copy of this
or just find some images of pages from this book,
it's pretty fascinating because their their neat little illustrations and
it just really drives home the diversity that went into
envisioning all the ways that you could create a barb

(42:31):
out of out of metal wiring. It's amazing how much
human imagination went into lengths of wire that can hurt you. Yeah. Now,
a particularly nasty variation on all this is we mentioned
razor wire briefly earlier, or concertina wire, which is either
the same or very similar, depending on how specific you

(42:53):
get in your barbed wire terminology. I thought concertina wire
had to do with like how it was coiled. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so,
but sometimes the words are Sometimes people say constantine wire,
which is just a perversion of the term. But but
in these were really getting into anti human barbed wire
varieties that you usually see used in military penal or

(43:16):
border settings. The development and widespread use of this sort
of wire really goes back to the First and Second
World Wars, where they were used in trench warfare environments
and other fortifications. Yeah, and this does seem to be
a change over time that like early on, most of
the messaging about barbed wire is, as Krell points out,
this culture versus nature thing. It's humankind versus the untamed

(43:40):
animal world, and you're putting these barriers in place to
keep the animals in or keep the animals out. Especially
over the course of the twentieth century, barbed wire is
it takes a much darker turn and we see it
more and more deployed specifically for uses on humans to
keep the humans in or to keep the humans out. Yeah. Absolutely. Now,
one we mentioned earlier about like masculinity in the marketing

(44:02):
and acceptance of barbed wire. One huge fact of the
American West was that while farmers were very much in
favor of barbed wire, cattlemen were not. Because what does
it do when you start throwing up miles and miles
of barbed wire fencing, Well, it disrupts the open grazing lands. Uh,
And it prevents cattle and horses from from moving around

(44:24):
freely or you know, from cow prevents cowboys from moving
a herd across a great distances. And on top of that,
cattle and horses could get pretty messed up in barbed wire.
I mean, that's that's one thing that is often kind
of uh skimmed over in the in the marketing material,
is that is that, yeah, this stuff can really cut
up an animal and or a human and uh and

(44:46):
and put them in some pretty put them in dire shape. Well,
I think that's specifically a lot of the early advertising
was trying to be misleading. That's why it kept emphasizing
the thorn thing. It was. I think it was trying
to suggest your animals will not get hurt. They will
just uh, you know, it will just deter them. It's
just true, we're just strategically deploying something that they would
otherwise encounter naturally. But that's not really quite the case.

(45:10):
Um So cattleman did not really take kindly to barbed
wire for a very long time. It was also apparently
decried by Texans is not only cruel and alien to
the culture of the open range, but also as um
As Krell points out quote a Yankee scheme to benefit
the industrial North, which I don't know. I mean, you

(45:31):
can you can certainly understand that point of view, right
because look at some of the places it's coming from,
So some of the birthplaces of the barbed wire industry.
You could easily see it's like, well, this is some
stuff that's made up North, and they're bringing it down here,
and they're just selling it to all these farmers, and
it's just cutting up our land. And so this is
this is like a whole part of of you know,

(45:53):
sort of wild West history. I guess it wasn't that
familiar with, but cattleman would would sometimes get fed up
with it, and they'd go and they just down like
miles of barbed wire fencing, sometimes as part of masked
gangs working at night. And these masked gangs sometimes even
had cool gang titles, um, and then they at first
it was illegal fencing, but then they would also use

(46:14):
these vigilante powers against legal fencing as well. And in
terms of just sort of the humane or in humane
aspect of barbed wire, you had varieties of more humane
barbed wire designs that were rolled out, the idea being
that would be easier for a cattle to uh, to
to be freed from them. Uh. Some one variety I
was looking at in particular had blocks of wood that

(46:38):
were in set in the wire as well. But this
ended up not really taking off. And I imagine a
big part of it is that just more manufacturing required um,
either on the industrial end or on the farmer's end,
and therefore it just wasn't it wasn't picked up easier
to stick with the crueler product in this case. Also,

(46:58):
Krall points out that the use of barbed wire against
humans and animals led to a micro industry of barbed
wire lineaments and antiseptics such as silver pine healing oil
or Dr Cox liniments and antiseptic among others that basically
like you know, kind of snake oil esque ointments. They
may have done some good, but the healing power of

(47:21):
Doctor Cox is on your barbed wire. But our animals
will be healthy as ever exactly. But I mean it
really shows you like there was there were enough people
and animals getting cut up by this stuff that there
was a like a side industry of selling specialized ointments
to deal with all those cuts to humans and livestock. Yeah, totally.
And as long as we're talking about the cultural impact,

(47:42):
I mean, obviously, barbed wire I think came to be
seen as one of the most iconic technologies symbolizing the
brutal conquest of the North American continent from from the
native people's who lived there. Yeah, this is where apparently
the name of the Devil's rope comes from. It was
one of the the names for it that was used

(48:03):
by the native peoples of North America. Some of the
Plains tribes called the Devil's ro Yeah. And and speaking
too of the of the pre colonial um uh you
know a West, it's not only humans and domestic herds
that were impacted, but also the American bison, which of
course more famously suffered from over hunting, hunted to the
you know, the brink of extinction, but also this ever

(48:24):
expanding use of barbed wire also cut them off from
vital grazing and watering areas. So while the story of
the invention of barbed wire is an interesting one, it's
hard not to be left, uh, I don't know, when
you just think about the impact of this technology left
with a pretty depressing uh landscape. Yeah, yeah, and it
it does literally make a landscape look depressing, uh, at

(48:47):
least the more you think about it. It's like, again,
barbed wire is something especially if you've grown up around it,
you can you can take it for granted, especially if
it is not used so much against your you you know,
if it's used sort of if it's used against the
livestock or against um, you know, people in an outline
group that you are not a part of, perhaps you
can you can be blind to its impact as well.

(49:09):
But yeah, for the most part, it's um. It's not
an invention that I would really classify in the good category. However,
there a couple of examples of of of uses for
barbed wire, uh, both of which surprised me. The first
of which is that while barbed wire couldn't transmit a
signal as well as traditional telephone wire, which is you know,

(49:32):
insulated copper wiring. UH. You still saw this case in
the early nineteen thirties where rural farmers were some of
the early adopters of this new technology of telephone lines,
and for a few years they would they were actually
using barbed wire because they had to build out their
own telephone collectives and without access to easy access to

(49:53):
all that insulated copper wire they had access to the
to the barbed wire. They just string the barbed wire instead,
which is which is interesting. I wonder what this call
sounded like. Well, probably pretty rough, probably just just clear
enough to get by. Um. And then this is like
just a few years before then it was replaced and
also at that point of farmers were no longer required

(50:15):
to string their own wiring. Now a more surprising use
uh though, was is uh multiple cases that came across
off in which barbed wire has been used for science. Um,
so you have a great many studies that utilize strands
of barbed wire. Usually it's like a single strand to
study bear populations. So basically what you have is a

(50:38):
situation where researchers will use single strands of barbed wire
to obtain for samples from wild bear populations for DNA testing.
And this also entails baiting them a little bit, which
according to Tom Dixon of Montana Outdoors, this would be
a bottle that contains quote year old a year old
fermented mix of cow blood and fish gut, which to

(51:01):
a human is pretty disgusting, but to a bear worth
checking out. So yeah, this is this is fascinating. So
the idea, of course is not to to hurt the bear,
and really not even necessarily to to like scrape into
its skin, but to catch some of its fur this ample,
you know, fur armor that like a black bear has

(51:22):
on its body. So the barrel come to check out
the bait, and when it does so, the the barbs
on the barbed wire will catch some of the fur
and pull it free. And then researchers are able to
use that fur and you know, look at the DNA
and use it to understand, you know, basically the shape
of wild bear populations. So we can at least we

(51:43):
can put that. Then another check under the positive uses
of barbed wire in world history, a way of caring
for bear populations like it. But that's all I have. Sorry,
it's just those two. That's those are the only examples
there might it's also fun to play with, is it
barbed wire? I kind of I don't know. When I

(52:04):
was a kid, backyard wrestlers, What were you playing with?
I don't know, not not for it's I don't know,
it's just like kind of cool, like whip around and stuff.
Oh well, I guess, um, I don't know. Well, it's
fun to play with in the same way that like
a good sticks fun to play with. Well, you know,
I don't. Here's the thing I do remember, like kids,

(52:24):
when when I was a kid in Newfoundland, Canada, the
other kids, the older kids, the dangerous kids, were into
two things. Michael Jackson. Uh those red uh leather jackets,
you know, like Michael Jackson. Really yeah, those were very popular.
And then everybody was making They were making like a
like a mace out of a stick of wood that

(52:45):
had nails driven through it. So um, you know, they're
just it was like The Lord of the Flies. I
guess it sounds like an eighties movie. Yeah, it was.
This was the eighties. Were they on rollerblades? No, because
the roads were all gravel where I was. I don't
know what you would have done with a rollerblade there,
But I don't remember there being a lot of barbed
wire around it. If there had been, I'm sure they

(53:05):
would have wrapped it around their makeshift melee weapons. Did
they answer to Lord Humongous? They I'm sure they knew
Lord Humongous he was. I think he was pretty popular
at the time. Um, but yeah, I think that would
have been the window for me encountering people playing with
barbed wire. For the most part, I think I was
always like a little wary of it because when I
would encounter barbed wire, either was either there was a

(53:28):
very good chance it was either like super rusty uh
and and therefore kind of icky, or it might be
electrified and therefore I really don't want to touch it.
Of course, that's that's another feature we didn't even mention
about barbed wires that's strong properly, then you can put
an electric current through it, which adds to its effectiveness. Yea.
And I think in some cases used to like especially

(53:49):
in ranching or you know, livestock control whatever, places where
you would once have barbed wire have been replaced mostly
with electric fencing because if you have an electric current
going through it, you need not have actual barbs because
you have electric barbs. But I will come back to
what I said earlier, is that I think that our
attitudes toward barbed wire, you know, they're going to really

(54:09):
revolve around our own experience and like the area in
which we encountered it. So I'd love to hear from
listeners out there, like what, how how do you interact
with barbed wire? Like, what is what comes to mind
when you think of barbed wire and to what extent
is it influenced by the way it is used in
your rural setting and your urban setting? Uh as it's
used in say, you know, prison environments or you know

(54:32):
border environments, or uh used in in in uh you
know in warfare of fortifications, etcetera. I'd love to hear
from everybody on these on these points. In the meantime,
if you want to check out other episodes of Invention,
including that that episode that we did on walls, for example,
you can head on over to invention pod dot com.
That will shoot you over to the I heart listing

(54:53):
for this show. But you can find us absolutely anywhere
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Just a rate review and subscribe. Those are some acts
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tell a friend, if you enjoy Invention, tell another human
being about the show and perhaps they'll enjoy it as well.
And I'm suddenly remembering we didn't even get into tattoos.

(55:14):
How many tattoos of barbed wire are there? And then
I wonder are people really appreciating all the varieties of
barbed wire. If you're thinking of getting a barbed wire tattoo,
stop and go, get go, Get that book that I
mentioned earlier with the seven hundred and something different varieties
of barbed wire, and just just look around a little bit,
do a little shopping, a little window shopping before you

(55:36):
decide on a particular brand of barbed wire that is
gonna be tattooed around your bicep. Get one of the
French varieties. Yeah. Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent
audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
just to say hello, you can email us at contact

(55:56):
at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I
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