March 2, 2020 • 50 mins
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 of Invention.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. 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
(00:24):
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, 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,
(00:47):
but also the the tree is kind of conquering the
barbed wire, So I think of that. I of course
think of metal fences, the tops of metal fences, particularly
to keep people out of the 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, event Horizon, or of course
(01:09):
the violent stunts that you see perpetrated sometimes in professional wrestling.
I definitely 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
(01:30):
could be just the fact that there is barbed wire everywhere.
We we tend to not see it even as we
see it. And I mean part of that is just
the nature of say a barbed wire fence or or
or cyclone fencing. This topped 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,
(01:53):
and it is uh, you know, if you've stopped to
really think about it, it's it's quite an oppressive presence
to have in the world around to its 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
(02:15):
enforce artificial barriers to both wildlife and humans. It's been
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
(02:37):
human populations, I mean, it carries with it the threat
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
(02:59):
of the barbed wire. Now all that is, you know,
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
(03:20):
tried to make it a little more, a little tamer,
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
(03:42):
a good chapter on the history of barbed wire in
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 so a lot
of this book is actually more in the kind of
art history realm is talking about symbolism and stuff. But
(04:03):
but he he works Jesus of Nazareth into the 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
(04:25):
head in medieval artwork. Yeah, yeah, so so it's really
is a natural um 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 the
(04:48):
nineteenth century here. Prior to the nineteenth century, humans obviously
had a robust collection of barrier technologies up their sleeves.
Wall infants technologies extend back to ancient time, 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 the twenty
(05:12):
first century b c. E. By this by the Sumerian
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,
(05:32):
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
(05:54):
out that fences are just a prominent feature of most
cultural landscapes and that they frequently play to 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
(06:16):
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,
(06:37):
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,
(06:58):
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
(07:19):
of the continents, you have large megafauna that that required
large areas to roam around in. But you know, also
had native peoples 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,
(07:40):
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 claimant. And
of course, what are you gonna do, Maybe throw a
fence around. And so the land was divided, the land
(08:01):
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
(08:22):
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 this way. Plus, despite the weight metal, wire
(08:45):
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 gales. It
doesn't get weighed down by snow in the terer, it
doesn't catch fire if it gets struck by lightning. Wire
fencing is kind of a perfect solution for the planes. Yeah,
(09:07):
and it you know, it doesn't last forever, but 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
a ghost of of whatever settlement it was a part of.
(09:29):
It was one of my favorite kinds of things to
discover as a good kid. You know, I would 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 lost house of some sort. But there is
(09:50):
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, make a mess of it, and maybe
get tangled up in it. But in the fence itself
(10:12):
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 pokers to sit there and hurt
(10:34):
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.
(10:55):
So we really need to take a pretty large step
back before we get to Glidden. 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 pomifera, commonly known as the osage orange
(11:18):
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 either. 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 boundaries and barriers, but it had many problems. You
(11:38):
could try to aligne 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
some of the desirable qualities of this thorn hedge through
(12:00):
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
that came before any patents in America, and then another
one that came before most patents in America. So let's
(12:23):
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,
you know, the material science reaching a point where people
could could innovate with it, or the demand whether there'd
(12:47):
be a situation where this suddenly appears useful. 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 Eugene Grassain Batilon who acquired a patent for quote
grating of wire work for fences and other purposes. And
(13:11):
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,
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,
(13:39):
imagine that world, you know, it's just a barbed wire
fence for every tree. Yeah. Like, if it's not clear
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 Batilon, but
his patent was the first to describe the common feature
(14:00):
of twisted wire with sharp projections. Grassian Battalon called these
projections bristling points, and Krell is careful to point out
that 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
(14:21):
how we see barbed wire used at And of course
it's cousin razor wire used today, something you can put
at the very top of a non barbed fence like
you know, 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.
(14:42):
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 years later, UH was awarded a
patent for barbed wire of a kind of different design.
Here the fence would consider list of double twisted wire
with diamond shaped barbs made out of flat pieces of
(15:06):
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 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
(15:29):
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 were hundreds, just between like
eighteen sixty seven and eighteen seventy four. 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 Britain. Uh Brittany
(15:51):
and Western France. And this guy was named Gilbert Gavellard.
This was granted in August eighteen sixty seven, and it
was for Gavellard's Brevede in Vineon, 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
(16:12):
things that would be uh quote caught between three strands
of intertwined wire. Uh This 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
(16:33):
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, 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
(16:55):
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 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
(17:18):
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 what could be
more natural? You're not making something grossly artificial, um an industrial. No,
You're you're taking something that the world does naturally, that
vegetation does naturally, and just applying it a little more
(17:42):
towards your specific aim. Well, yeah, I wonder if grass
Saint Battalan was anticipating somebody like me who's horrified by
the idea of a barbed wire fence around every tree.
Because when he's talking about his proposal for tree guards,
he writes that they quote maybe of double ribbon wire,
which allows the addition of small wire points, and when
(18:02):
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. 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
(18:23):
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 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
(18:44):
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 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
(19:07):
just how cultured it is, how essential it is to
have fencing. The fencing is the thing that separates us
from the savages, of 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
(19:29):
that sort of envisioned barbed wire as the demarcation line
of a kind of controlled arcadia where he where he
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,
(19:51):
but they're all separated from these lanes by this elegant
looking barbed wire. And and so it's like, I don't know,
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
(20:12):
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
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
(20:32):
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
but still I like, 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
(20:54):
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. All right,
we're back. So, as we mentioned earlier, you had the
(21:16):
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 see this
this real uh, this real rush right right. 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 that
(21:37):
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.
(22:00):
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
(22:22):
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
(22:43):
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
(23:06):
of this for our notes here, And really they look
more like spearheads or bayonnets 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
(23:26):
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
(23:46):
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
(24:06):
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
(24:28):
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
(24:51):
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 beads, these little kind of like saw
(25:12):
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
(25:34):
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 freely around the wire,
(25:57):
it seems a lot less likely than the barbed wire
were used 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 rotates
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 describing his inspiration for the invention, which was basically
(26:22):
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 barbed as it has been
changed too since, And I thought it would make a
(26:42):
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 a hunt it was, you know,
when you got a stubborn mule. But there are many
(27:03):
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 or painful for the worker. It
(27:24):
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 sharookens 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 more more about how the design could
(27:48):
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 and
for barbed wire that would ever become a huge commercial success.
According to Krell, in eighteen seventy four, just about ten
thousand pounds of barbed wire were produced and sold. Six
(28:11):
years later, in eighteen eighty, 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 another thing that I think is
common in barbed wire marketing, which is, I think pretty
(28:34):
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 um, a male audience that was
going to be buying this barbed wire for for a
variety of reasons. But yeah, there's this whole again, the
man versus nature attaining of the wilderness um for the
(28:58):
most part. But we will get into a major divide
on that as we move forward. Sure, So what was
Glidden'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 the two wires
and then held in place by the wrapping of the
(29:18):
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,
there was a huge amount of legal battling over barbed
(29:40):
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
actually I was running across art goals in the New
York Times from the day where they were had updates
(30:04):
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, Lucinda helped Joseph figure out the process
that would set his barbed wire apart. So first, Glinton
(30:27):
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 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
(30:49):
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 them if it were twisted around the first.
To this end, he converted an old grindstone into a
rudimentary twisting device, and, with the help of Lucinda, who
(31:12):
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 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 Better
(31:33):
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 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
(31:54):
apparently at times in the sale of quote moonshine wire,
which if I'm understanding correctly, would have been like kind
of like bootleg design wires barbed wire recipes that he
wasn't 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
(32:15):
in this. Like 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
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
(32:36):
Has who came up with a similar process to Glinten's
in the same year, but Glinden won the legal battle
over precedence. In fact, there were at least three inventors,
So you had Glidden, you had Jacob Hash, and then
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.
(33:00):
After the three of them all visited the Decab, Illinois
County Fair of eighteen seventy three, where the three of
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
(33:23):
of them looked at this idea of Roses so like
a long wooden dowel with barbs on it. All three
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
(33:46):
think it's funny that like they're all fighting, they're fighting
each other, and like they all basically got the idea
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 defeat inventor Jacob Hayes,
who you know, who lost this intellectual property battle to
Joseph Glinton. He wrote a poem called be as Happy
(34:08):
as you Can that is quoted in Krell's book This
is so good, This life is not all sunshine as
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
(34:32):
like the Bobby Fuller Four's letter dance of barbed wire.
And in this we do have the the 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,
(34:54):
it is accurate to say that barbed wire quote was
born in France, independently conceived in the Eastern States of America,
New Jersey, Ohio, and New York, and grew up on
the prairies and planes where for different reasons, farmers especially
and later ranchers turned increasingly defensing. Alright, we're gonna take
a break, but when we come back, we will continue
to discuss barbed wire, and we'll even get into uh
(35:18):
one or two examples of barbed wire used in a
way that we might well describe as uh, I don't know,
not evil. Yeah, I think that would be accurate. Alright,
we're back. So there are again many different varieties of
barbed wire, and and one book that is that is
(35:40):
often mentioned in UH in writings about the history of
barbed wire is a book that was published in nineteen
seventy seven titled The bobbed Wire Bible. That's bob b
O B B E d by Jack Glover published in
seventies seven, and I think earlier as well, but I
think maybe the addition I was looking at for was
from seventy seven and it contains illustrations of seven hundred
(36:01):
and thirty four different steel barbed wire knots, including things
like scuts, wooden block, 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
(36:24):
diversity that went into envisioning all the ways that you
could create a barb 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,
(36:46):
or concertina wire, which is either the same or very similar,
depending on how specific you 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
(37:08):
really getting into anti human barbed wire varieties that you
usually see used in military penal or 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
(37:29):
that like early on, most of the messaging about barbed
wire is, as Kroll points out, this culture versus nature thing.
It's humankind versus the untamed 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
(37:49):
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 and acceptance
of barbed wire. One huge factor of the American West
was that while farmers were very much in favor of
barbed wire, cattlemen were not. Because what does it do
(38:12):
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
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.
(38:32):
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, the stuff can really cut
up an animal and or a human and uh and
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
(38:53):
the thorn thing. It was. I think it was trying
to suggest your animals will not get hurt. You know,
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.
Um So, cattleman did not really take kindly to barbed
(39:13):
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
can you can certainly understand that point of view, right
because look at some of the places it's coming from,
(39:35):
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,
sort of wild West history. I guess it wasn't that
familiar with, but cattleman would would sometimes get fed up
(39:57):
with it, and they'd go and they just cut down
like miles of barb wired 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 these vigilante powers against legal fencing as well. And
(40:17):
in terms of just sort of the humane or inhumane
aspect of barbed wire, you had varieties of more humane
barbed wire designs that were rolled out the idea of
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 were in set in the wire as well. But
(40:40):
this ended up not really taking off. And I imagine
a big part of it is that it's 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, Krall points out that the use of
barbed wire against humans and animals led to a micro
(41:01):
industry of barbed wire liniments and antiseptics such as silver
pine healing oil or Dr Cox liniaments 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 Doctor Cox is on your barbed wire.
(41:22):
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, I mean, obviously, barbed wire
(41:44):
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 peoples who lived there. Yeah,
this is where apparently the name the Devil's rope comes from.
That was one of the the names for it that
was used by the native peoples of North America. Some
of the Plains tribes called the Devil's rope. Yeah. And
(42:06):
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 expanding use of barbed wire also cut them
off from vital grazing and watering areas. So while the
(42:29):
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 least the more you think about it. It's like, again,
barbed wire is something especially if you've grown up around it,
(42:51):
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 livestock
or again against um, you know, people in an outline
group that you are not a part of. Perhaps you
can you can people lying to its impact as well.
But um, yeah, for the most part, it's um, it's
(43:12):
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, insulated copper wiring. Uh. You still saw
(43:34):
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 all that insulated copper wire they had
access to the to the barbed wire, they just string
(43:56):
the barbed wire instead, which is which is in our
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 to string their own wiring. Now
a more surprising use, though it was, is multiple cases
(44:21):
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 situation where researchers will use single
strands of barbed wire to obtain for samples from wild
(44:43):
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 guts, which to human is pretty disgusting, but
to a bear worth checking out. So yeah, this is
(45:06):
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 on its body. So
the barrel come to check out the bait, and when
it does so, the the barbs on the barbed wire
(45:28):
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 can put that. Then another
check under the positive uses of barbed wire in world
(45:48):
history a way of caring for bear populations. I like it,
but that's all I have. Sorry, it's just those two.
That's those are the only examples there. It's also fun
to play with, is it barbed wire? Kind of I
don't know. When I was a kid, backyard wrestlers were
playing with No, no, no, not not for it's I
(46:08):
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,
when when I was a kid in Newfoundland, Canada, the
other kids, the older kids, the dangerous kids, were into
(46:29):
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
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 it.
(46:51):
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 roller blade there,
But I don't remember there being a lot of barbed
wire around it. If there had been, I'm sure they
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
(47:12):
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 there was either there was
a 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.
(47:35):
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. Yeah,
And I think in some cases us to like especially
in ranching or you know, livestock control whatever, places where
you would once have barbed wire have been replaced mostly
with electric fence because if you have an electric current
(47:56):
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
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
(48:18):
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
border environments, or uh used in in in uh you
know in warfare, fortifications, etcetera. I'd love to hear from
(48:39):
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
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wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to
be Just a rate you and subscribe. Those are some
(49:01):
acts you can you can do that really help us out. Also,
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.
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,
(49:23):
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
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
(49:44):
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
at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
(50:04):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. M
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. 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
(00:24):
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, 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,
(00:47):
but also the the tree is kind of conquering the
barbed wire, So I think of that. I of course
think of metal fences, the tops of metal fences, particularly
to keep people out of the 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, event Horizon, or of course
(01:09):
the violent stunts that you see perpetrated sometimes in professional wrestling.
I definitely 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
(01:30):
could be just the fact that there is barbed wire everywhere.
We we tend to not see it even as we
see it. And I mean part of that is just
the nature of say a barbed wire fence or or
or cyclone fencing. This topped 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,
(01:53):
and it is uh, you know, if you've stopped to
really think about it, it's it's quite an oppressive presence
to have in the world around to its 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
(02:15):
enforce artificial barriers to both wildlife and humans. It's been
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
(02:37):
human populations, I mean, it carries with it the threat
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
(02:59):
of the barbed wire. Now all that is, you know,
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
(03:20):
tried to make it a little more, a little tamer,
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
(03:42):
a good chapter on the history of barbed wire in
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 so a lot
of this book is actually more in the kind of
art history realm is talking about symbolism and stuff. But
(04:03):
but he he works Jesus of Nazareth into the 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
(04:25):
head in medieval artwork. Yeah, yeah, so so it's really
is a natural um 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 the
(04:48):
nineteenth century here. Prior to the nineteenth century, humans obviously
had a robust collection of barrier technologies up their sleeves.
Wall infants technologies extend back to ancient time, 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 the twenty
(05:12):
first century b c. E. By this by the Sumerian
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,
(05:32):
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
(05:54):
out that fences are just a prominent feature of most
cultural landscapes and that they frequently play to 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
(06:16):
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,
(06:37):
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,
(06:58):
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
(07:19):
of the continents, you have large megafauna that that required
large areas to roam around in. But you know, also
had native peoples 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,
(07:40):
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 claimant. And
of course, what are you gonna do, Maybe throw a
fence around. And so the land was divided, the land
(08:01):
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
(08:22):
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 this way. Plus, despite the weight metal, wire
(08:45):
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 gales. It
doesn't get weighed down by snow in the terer, it
doesn't catch fire if it gets struck by lightning. Wire
fencing is kind of a perfect solution for the planes. Yeah,
(09:07):
and it you know, it doesn't last forever, but 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
a ghost of of whatever settlement it was a part of.
(09:29):
It was one of my favorite kinds of things to
discover as a good kid. You know, I would 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 lost house of some sort. But there is
(09:50):
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, make a mess of it, and maybe
get tangled up in it. But in the fence itself
(10:12):
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 pokers to sit there and hurt
(10:34):
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.
(10:55):
So we really need to take a pretty large step
back before we get to Glidden. 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 pomifera, commonly known as the osage orange
(11:18):
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 either. 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 boundaries and barriers, but it had many problems. You
(11:38):
could try to aligne 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
some of the desirable qualities of this thorn hedge through
(12:00):
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
that came before any patents in America, and then another
one that came before most patents in America. So let's
(12:23):
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,
you know, the material science reaching a point where people
could could innovate with it, or the demand whether there'd
(12:47):
be a situation where this suddenly appears useful. 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 Eugene Grassain Batilon who acquired a patent for quote
grating of wire work for fences and other purposes. And
(13:11):
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,
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,
(13:39):
imagine that world, you know, it's just a barbed wire
fence for every tree. Yeah. Like, if it's not clear
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 Batilon, but
his patent was the first to describe the common feature
(14:00):
of twisted wire with sharp projections. Grassian Battalon called these
projections bristling points, and Krell is careful to point out
that 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
(14:21):
how we see barbed wire used at And of course
it's cousin razor wire used today, something you can put
at the very top of a non barbed fence like
you know, 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.
(14:42):
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 years later, UH was awarded a
patent for barbed wire of a kind of different design.
Here the fence would consider list of double twisted wire
with diamond shaped barbs made out of flat pieces of
(15:06):
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 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
(15:29):
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 were hundreds, just between like
eighteen sixty seven and eighteen seventy four. 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 Britain. Uh Brittany
(15:51):
and Western France. And this guy was named Gilbert Gavellard.
This was granted in August eighteen sixty seven, and it
was for Gavellard's Brevede in Vineon, 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
(16:12):
things that would be uh quote caught between three strands
of intertwined wire. Uh This 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
(16:33):
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, 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
(16:55):
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 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
(17:18):
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 what could be
more natural? You're not making something grossly artificial, um an industrial. No,
You're you're taking something that the world does naturally, that
vegetation does naturally, and just applying it a little more
(17:42):
towards your specific aim. Well, yeah, I wonder if grass
Saint Battalan was anticipating somebody like me who's horrified by
the idea of a barbed wire fence around every tree.
Because when he's talking about his proposal for tree guards,
he writes that they quote maybe of double ribbon wire,
which allows the addition of small wire points, and when
(18:02):
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. 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
(18:23):
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 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
(18:44):
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 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
(19:07):
just how cultured it is, how essential it is to
have fencing. The fencing is the thing that separates us
from the savages, of 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
(19:29):
that sort of envisioned barbed wire as the demarcation line
of a kind of controlled arcadia where he where he
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,
(19:51):
but they're all separated from these lanes by this elegant
looking barbed wire. And and so it's like, I don't know,
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
(20:12):
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
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
(20:32):
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
but still I like, 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
(20:54):
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. All right,
we're back. So, as we mentioned earlier, you had the
(21:16):
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 see this
this real uh, this real rush right right. 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 that
(21:37):
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.
(22:00):
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
(22:22):
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
(22:43):
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
(23:06):
of this for our notes here, And really they look
more like spearheads or bayonnets 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
(23:26):
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
(23:46):
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
(24:06):
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
(24:28):
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
(24:51):
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 beads, these little kind of like saw
(25:12):
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
(25:34):
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 freely around the wire,
(25:57):
it seems a lot less likely than the barbed wire
were used 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 rotates
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 describing his inspiration for the invention, which was basically
(26:22):
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 barbed as it has been
changed too since, And I thought it would make a
(26:42):
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 a hunt it was, you know,
when you got a stubborn mule. But there are many
(27:03):
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 or painful for the worker. It
(27:24):
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 sharookens 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 more more about how the design could
(27:48):
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 and
for barbed wire that would ever become a huge commercial success.
According to Krell, in eighteen seventy four, just about ten
thousand pounds of barbed wire were produced and sold. Six
(28:11):
years later, in eighteen eighty, 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 another thing that I think is
common in barbed wire marketing, which is, I think pretty
(28:34):
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 um, a male audience that was
going to be buying this barbed wire for for a
variety of reasons. But yeah, there's this whole again, the
man versus nature attaining of the wilderness um for the
(28:58):
most part. But we will get into a major divide
on that as we move forward. Sure, So what was
Glidden'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 the two wires
and then held in place by the wrapping of the
(29:18):
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,
there was a huge amount of legal battling over barbed
(29:40):
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
actually I was running across art goals in the New
York Times from the day where they were had updates
(30:04):
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, Lucinda helped Joseph figure out the process
that would set his barbed wire apart. So first, Glinton
(30:27):
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 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
(30:49):
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 them if it were twisted around the first.
To this end, he converted an old grindstone into a
rudimentary twisting device, and, with the help of Lucinda, who
(31:12):
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 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 Better
(31:33):
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 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
(31:54):
apparently at times in the sale of quote moonshine wire,
which if I'm understanding correctly, would have been like kind
of like bootleg design wires barbed wire recipes that he
wasn't 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
(32:15):
in this. Like 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
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
(32:36):
Has who came up with a similar process to Glinten's
in the same year, but Glinden won the legal battle
over precedence. In fact, there were at least three inventors,
So you had Glidden, you had Jacob Hash, and then
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.
(33:00):
After the three of them all visited the Decab, Illinois
County Fair of eighteen seventy three, where the three of
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
(33:23):
of them looked at this idea of Roses so like
a long wooden dowel with barbs on it. All three
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
(33:46):
think it's funny that like they're all fighting, they're fighting
each other, and like they all basically got the idea
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 defeat inventor Jacob Hayes,
who you know, who lost this intellectual property battle to
Joseph Glinton. He wrote a poem called be as Happy
(34:08):
as you Can that is quoted in Krell's book This
is so good, This life is not all sunshine as
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
(34:32):
like the Bobby Fuller Four's letter dance of barbed wire.
And in this we do have the the 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,
(34:54):
it is accurate to say that barbed wire quote was
born in France, independently conceived in the Eastern States of America,
New Jersey, Ohio, and New York, and grew up on
the prairies and planes where for different reasons, farmers especially
and later ranchers turned increasingly defensing. Alright, we're gonna take
a break, but when we come back, we will continue
to discuss barbed wire, and we'll even get into uh
(35:18):
one or two examples of barbed wire used in a
way that we might well describe as uh, I don't know,
not evil. Yeah, I think that would be accurate. Alright,
we're back. So there are again many different varieties of
barbed wire, and and one book that is that is
(35:40):
often mentioned in UH in writings about the history of
barbed wire is a book that was published in nineteen
seventy seven titled The bobbed Wire Bible. That's bob b
O B B E d by Jack Glover published in
seventies seven, and I think earlier as well, but I
think maybe the addition I was looking at for was
from seventy seven and it contains illustrations of seven hundred
(36:01):
and thirty four different steel barbed wire knots, including things
like scuts, wooden block, 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
(36:24):
diversity that went into envisioning all the ways that you
could create a barb 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,
(36:46):
or concertina wire, which is either the same or very similar,
depending on how specific you 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
(37:08):
really getting into anti human barbed wire varieties that you
usually see used in military penal or 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
(37:29):
that like early on, most of the messaging about barbed
wire is, as Kroll points out, this culture versus nature thing.
It's humankind versus the untamed 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
(37:49):
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 and acceptance
of barbed wire. One huge factor of the American West
was that while farmers were very much in favor of
barbed wire, cattlemen were not. Because what does it do
(38:12):
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
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.
(38:32):
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, the stuff can really cut
up an animal and or a human and uh and
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
(38:53):
the thorn thing. It was. I think it was trying
to suggest your animals will not get hurt. You know,
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.
Um So, cattleman did not really take kindly to barbed
(39:13):
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
can you can certainly understand that point of view, right
because look at some of the places it's coming from,
(39:35):
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,
sort of wild West history. I guess it wasn't that
familiar with, but cattleman would would sometimes get fed up
(39:57):
with it, and they'd go and they just cut down
like miles of barb wired 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 these vigilante powers against legal fencing as well. And
(40:17):
in terms of just sort of the humane or inhumane
aspect of barbed wire, you had varieties of more humane
barbed wire designs that were rolled out the idea of
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 were in set in the wire as well. But
(40:40):
this ended up not really taking off. And I imagine
a big part of it is that it's 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, Krall points out that the use of
barbed wire against humans and animals led to a micro
(41:01):
industry of barbed wire liniments and antiseptics such as silver
pine healing oil or Dr Cox liniaments 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 Doctor Cox is on your barbed wire.
(41:22):
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, I mean, obviously, barbed wire
(41:44):
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 peoples who lived there. Yeah,
this is where apparently the name the Devil's rope comes from.
That was one of the the names for it that
was used by the native peoples of North America. Some
of the Plains tribes called the Devil's rope. Yeah. And
(42:06):
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 expanding use of barbed wire also cut them
off from vital grazing and watering areas. So while the
(42:29):
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 least the more you think about it. It's like, again,
barbed wire is something especially if you've grown up around it,
(42:51):
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 livestock
or again against um, you know, people in an outline
group that you are not a part of. Perhaps you
can you can people lying to its impact as well.
But um, yeah, for the most part, it's um, it's
(43:12):
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, insulated copper wiring. Uh. You still saw
(43:34):
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 all that insulated copper wire they had
access to the to the barbed wire, they just string
(43:56):
the barbed wire instead, which is which is in our
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 to string their own wiring. Now
a more surprising use, though it was, is multiple cases
(44:21):
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 situation where researchers will use single
strands of barbed wire to obtain for samples from wild
(44:43):
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 guts, which to human is pretty disgusting, but
to a bear worth checking out. So yeah, this is
(45:06):
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 on its body. So
the barrel come to check out the bait, and when
it does so, the the barbs on the barbed wire
(45:28):
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 can put that. Then another
check under the positive uses of barbed wire in world
(45:48):
history a way of caring for bear populations. I like it,
but that's all I have. Sorry, it's just those two.
That's those are the only examples there. It's also fun
to play with, is it barbed wire? Kind of I
don't know. When I was a kid, backyard wrestlers were
playing with No, no, no, not not for it's I
(46:08):
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,
when when I was a kid in Newfoundland, Canada, the
other kids, the older kids, the dangerous kids, were into
(46:29):
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
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 it.
(46:51):
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 roller blade there,
But I don't remember there being a lot of barbed
wire around it. If there had been, I'm sure they
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
(47:12):
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 there was either there was
a 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.
(47:35):
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. Yeah,
And I think in some cases us to like especially
in ranching or you know, livestock control whatever, places where
you would once have barbed wire have been replaced mostly
with electric fence because if you have an electric current
(47:56):
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
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
(48:18):
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
border environments, or uh used in in in uh you
know in warfare, fortifications, etcetera. I'd love to hear from
(48:39):
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
for this show. But you can find us absolutely anywhere
wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to
be Just a rate you and subscribe. Those are some
(49:01):
acts you can you can do that really help us out. Also,
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.
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,
(49:23):
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
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
(49:44):
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
at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
(50:04):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. M
Invention News
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Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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