Barbed wire
The first patent in the United States for barbed wire[1] was issued in 1867 to Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio, who is regarded as the inventor.
[2][3] Joseph F. Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, received a patent for the modern invention[4] in 1874 after he made his own modifications to previous versions.
In April 1865 Louis François Janin proposed a double wire with diamond-shaped metal barbs; Francois was granted a patent.
[11] Traditional fence materials used in the Eastern U.S., like wood and stone, were expensive to use in the large open spaces of the plains, and hedging was not reliable in the rocky, clay-based and rain-starved dusty soils.
[12] The "Big Four" in barbed wire were Joseph Glidden, Jacob Haish, Charles Francis Washburn, and Isaac L.
That day, Glidden was accompanied by two other men, Isaac L. Ellwood, a hardware dealer and Jacob Haish, a lumber merchant.
[17] In the late 1870s, John Warne Gates of Illinois began to promote barbed wire, now a proven product, in the lucrative markets of Texas.
[11] Demonstrations by Gates in San Antonio in 1876 showed that the wire could keep cattle contained, and sales then increased dramatically.
[22] One fan wrote the inventor Joseph Glidden: Barbed wire emerged as a major source of conflict with the so-called "Big Die Up" incident in the 1880s.
The ranchers in place, especially in the Texas Panhandle, knew that their holdings could not support the grazing of additional cattle, so the only alternative was to block the migrations with barb wire fencing.
Later other smaller scale cattlemen, especially in central Texas, opposed the closing of the open range, and began cutting fences to allow cattle to pass through to find grazing land.
In this transition zone between the agricultural regions to the south and the rangeland to the north, conflict erupted, with vigilantes joining the scene causing chaos and even death.
[26] John Warne Gates demonstrated barbed wire for Washburn and Moen in Military Plaza, San Antonio, Texas in 1876.
The demonstration showing cattle restrained by the new kind of fencing was followed immediately by invitations to the Menger Hotel to place orders.
These disputes were decisively settled in favor of the farmers, and heavy penalties were instituted for cutting a barbed wire fence.
For this reason, some historians have dated the end of the Old West era of American history to the invention and subsequent proliferation of barbed wire.
The sole function of a line post is not to take up slack but to keep the barbed wire strands spaced equally and off the ground.
Corner posts are 15 to 20 centimetres (6 to 8 in) in diameter or larger, and a minimum 2.5 metres (8 ft) in length may consist of treated wood or from durable on-site trees such as osage orange, black locust, red cedar, or red mulberry, also railroad ties, telephone, and power poles are salvaged to be used as corner posts (poles and railroad ties were often treated with chemicals determined to be an environmental hazard and cannot be reused in some jurisdictions).
In New Zealand wire fences must provide passage for dogs since they are the main means of controlling and driving animals on farms.
[30] More significantly, barbed wire was used extensively by all participating combatants in World War I to prevent movement, with deadly consequences.
Barbed wire entanglements were placed in front of trenches to prevent direct charges on men below, increasingly leading to greater use of more advanced weapons such as high-powered machine guns and grenades.
[31] Barbed wire could be exposed to heavy bombardments because it could be easily replaced, and its structure included so much open space that machine guns rarely destroyed enough of it to defeat its purpose.
However, barbed wire was defeated by the tank in 1916, as shown by the Allied breakthrough at Amiens through German lines on August 8, 1918.
Infirmaries in extermination camps like Auschwitz where prisoners were gassed or experimented on were often separated from other areas by electrified wire and were often braided with branches to prevent outsiders from knowing what was concealed behind their walls.
[35] During the United States' World War II Internment of Japanese Americans, barbed wire was used to enclose the concentration camps, such as Manzanar.
To prevent humans crossing, many prisons, and other high-security installations construct fences with razor wire, a variant which replaces the barbs with near-continuous cutting surfaces sufficient to injure unprotected persons who climb on it.
Wire was placed either to impede or halt the passage of soldiers, or to channel them into narrow defiles in which small arms, particularly machine guns, and indirect fire could be used with greater effect as they attempted to pass.
Artillery bombardments on the Western Front became increasingly aimed at cutting the barbed wire that was a major component of trench warfare, particularly once new "wire-cutting" fuzes were introduced midway through the war.
Other inventions were also a result of the war, such as the screw picket, which enabled construction of wire obstacles to be done at night in No Man's Land without the necessity of hammering stakes into the ground and drawing attention from the enemy.
The frequent use of barbed wire on prison walls, around concentration camps, and the like, has made it symbolic of oppression and denial of freedom in general.
