Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be talking about barbed wire,
Speaker 1: which which for me, it's it's interesting to just think
Speaker 1: about how varied our thoughts can be just basic word
Speaker 1: association with barbed wire, because when when I just instantly
Speaker 1: think of the word without a lot of prepping, you know,
Speaker 1: of course I think of barbed wire barriers often. Uh.
Speaker 1: In particular, I think about barbed wire that is uh
Speaker 1: like in the woods, uh, you know, wrapped around old trees,
Speaker 1: and the it kind of grow the tree has grown
Speaker 1: around the barbed wire in this kind of grotesque way,
Speaker 1: but also the the tree is kind of conquering the
Speaker 1: barbed wire, So I think of that. I of course
Speaker 1: think of metal fences, the tops of metal fences, particularly
Speaker 1: to keep people out of the industrial areas. You see
Speaker 1: that a lot in the urban environment. And then of
Speaker 1: course I think about its use and say hell raised
Speaker 1: or horror films, you know, event Horizon, or of course
Speaker 1: the violent stunts that you see perpetrated sometimes in professional wrestling.
Speaker 1: I definitely assumed there was a pro wrestling angle that
Speaker 1: led you to this topic. Yeah, well no, no, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that that led me to the to the topic.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what exactly, you know, I can't remember
Speaker 1: what made me think this would be a good one
Speaker 1: to look into. Um. Probably, I mean, part of it
Speaker 1: could be just the fact that there is barbed wire everywhere.
Speaker 1: We we tend to not see it even as we
Speaker 1: see it. And I mean part of that is just
Speaker 1: the nature of say a barbed wire fence or or
Speaker 1: or cyclone fencing. This topped with barbed wire, is that,
Speaker 1: of course you can see through it, you can see
Speaker 1: what's on the other side. To a certain extent, it
Speaker 1: is it is almost invisible, but yet it is there,
Speaker 1: and it is uh, you know, if you've stopped to
Speaker 1: really think about it, it's it's quite an oppressive presence
Speaker 1: to have in the world around to its peak hostile architecture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, just to go a little deeper, um,
Speaker 1: in terms of associating barbed wire with what it's been
Speaker 1: used for, I mean, we we have to realize that
Speaker 1: it's been used to divide up the natural world and
Speaker 1: enforce artificial barriers to both wildlife and humans. It's been
Speaker 1: used to enforce contested borders. It was used to create
Speaker 1: the physical barriers of Nazi prisoner of war camps, and
Speaker 1: most infamously of all the fences of concentration and death
Speaker 1: camps during the Holocaust. It's used to enclose human prisoners,
Speaker 1: and in all of its uses against humans and with
Speaker 1: human populations, I mean, it carries with it the threat
Speaker 1: of ripped and torn flesh. It doesn't just prevent you
Speaker 1: from crossing. It threatens you. I mean it says not
Speaker 1: just like I'm going to make it hard for you
Speaker 1: to get past this point, but it says you will
Speaker 1: get injured if you try to get past this point.
Speaker 1: It will be difficult and or unpleasant. Uh, So you'd
Speaker 1: better stay on your side of the fence, your side
Speaker 1: of the barbed wire. Now all that is, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of dark and grotesque and oppressive and so forth. Um,
Speaker 1: but the entire episode is not necessarily going to be
Speaker 1: as grim. Barbed wire has a pretty fascinating history, uh
Speaker 1: in the United States and in Europe. And we'll get
Speaker 1: into that even as we discuss its its uses and
Speaker 1: and also some of the times and places where people
Speaker 1: tried to make it a little more, a little tamer,
Speaker 1: I guess, but generally barbed wire is still going to
Speaker 1: be barbed wire, uh, no matter how you twist it.
Speaker 1: So as usual, let's first talk about what came before
Speaker 1: barbed wire. Okay, I figured this is a good place
Speaker 1: to call out one of the main sources that we're
Speaker 1: going to be referring to in this episode, which was
Speaker 1: a good chapter on the history of barbed wire in
Speaker 1: a book called The Devil's Rope, A Cultural History of
Speaker 1: barbed Wire by Alan Krell, who is an associate professor
Speaker 1: at the School of Art History and Art Education at
Speaker 1: the University of New South Wales. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of this book is actually more in the kind of
Speaker 1: art history realm is talking about symbolism and stuff. But
Speaker 1: but he he works Jesus of Nazareth into the first chapter. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting when you look at like the early days
Speaker 1: of barbed wire, what was the closest precedent you might
Speaker 1: find in the imagery around you for this twisted, thorny
Speaker 1: strand of material. It was probably going to be like
Speaker 1: the crown of thorns that you would see on Jesus's
Speaker 1: head in medieval artwork. Yeah, yeah, so so it's really
Speaker 1: is a natural um transformation to go from uh, from
Speaker 1: a crown of thorns to potentially, you know, like crown
Speaker 1: of barbed wire, which is the author points out, like
Speaker 1: you see this kind of imagery thrown around even in
Speaker 1: the early literature about barbed wire. So uh, for the
Speaker 1: most part, we're talking about inventions and innovations of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century here. Prior to the nineteenth century, humans obviously
Speaker 1: had a robust collection of barrier technologies up their sleeves.
Speaker 1: Wall infants technologies extend back to ancient time, and we
Speaker 1: mentioned a lot of this in our previous invention episode
Speaker 1: on walls. Among the earliest known defensive walls are the
Speaker 1: ancient walls of Mesopotamia, specifically those constructed in the twenty
Speaker 1: first century b c. E. By this by the Sumerian
Speaker 1: rulers Shulgi and Shu sin Uh. And of course this
Speaker 1: would refer to the earliest like territorial border wall we
Speaker 1: can find evidence of now, Like if you're just talking
Speaker 1: about defensive walls for like castles or towns or buildings,
Speaker 1: that's much much older. That's going to go back many centuries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as for fencing itself, and it is in the
Speaker 1: construction of fences as opposed to full on walls. Uh,
Speaker 1: The ancient history here is also murky and impossible to
Speaker 1: nail down. I was looking at old fences in Archaeology
Speaker 1: by Arnie Innarison, presented at the eighty fourth Annual Meeting
Speaker 1: of the Society for American Archaeology, and the author points
Speaker 1: out that fences are just a prominent feature of most
Speaker 1: cultural landscapes and that they frequently play to land division
Speaker 1: and on farm grazing management. So, you know, it stands
Speaker 1: to reason that we can we can roughly, I guess,
Speaker 1: think of fencing as a product of the agricultural revolution.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, nomadic herdsmen seemingly made use
Speaker 1: of animal pins and essentially fences as well in their
Speaker 1: temporary settlements. So it really goes back far in human history.
Speaker 1: There is no you know, no individual person or culture
Speaker 1: we can point to and say, hey, they came up
Speaker 1: with fencing. Yeah, And I think when you go back
Speaker 1: farther into history, most fencing is going to be for
Speaker 1: the control of animals rather than for the control of humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're talking about just mild barriers to make managing your
Speaker 1: your various domesticated animals a little easier, so let's fast
Speaker 1: forward a bit all the way to nineteenth century see
Speaker 1: America and Europe, but specifically America, because this is where
Speaker 1: we encounter the the European settler's dream of manifest destiny,
Speaker 1: the idea that here is the American frontier spread before us,
Speaker 1: and it is it is ours for the taking by
Speaker 1: divine right. And part of this, uh, this whole vision,
Speaker 1: of course, is the idea that you just have these
Speaker 1: these vast empty stretches of land. Right. Of course, in reality,
Speaker 1: these lands were far from unoccupied. Uh. There were, of
Speaker 1: course animals living there, as with any you know, any
Speaker 1: of the continents, you have large megafauna that that required
Speaker 1: large areas to roam around in. But you know, also
Speaker 1: had native peoples that had lived here for at least
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand years. But in spite of all that, you know,
Speaker 1: it was decided that everybody was going to get a
Speaker 1: chance to have a piece of this unclaimed frontier. So,
Speaker 1: as Eleanor Commins outlined in a Brief History of barbed
Speaker 1: Wire for Popular Science, Abraham Lincoln's Homestead Act of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty two opened it up for any American to claim
Speaker 1: uh one sixty acres of public land per citizen. All
Speaker 1: you had to do is go out there claimant. And
Speaker 1: of course, what are you gonna do, Maybe throw a
Speaker 1: fence around. And so the land was divided, the land
Speaker 1: was worked and transformed. And if you're looking to keep
Speaker 1: animals on your property uh and or keep other animals
Speaker 1: off of it, it does pay to build some fences.
Speaker 1: But while the American Frontier wasn't all empty planes and
Speaker 1: you know barren, uh, you know, the Great American Desert
Speaker 1: and so forth, there are still plenty of areas where
Speaker 1: there is a lack of trees and wood. And therefore
Speaker 1: it made traditional fences a difficult proposition. And it also
Speaker 1: took you know more, It took longer than was comfortable
Speaker 1: in many cases to gross a hedgerows to serve as
Speaker 1: natural barriers. And so settlers begin to experiment with the
Speaker 1: use of wire for fencing. And this makes sense, right
Speaker 1: You use less wood uh and or depend on fewer
Speaker 1: post trees this way. Plus, despite the weight metal, wire
Speaker 1: travels rather well. Yeah, wire is a pretty natural solution here.
Speaker 1: Wire fencing is less likely to be harmed by the weather.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get blown down by high winds because it
Speaker 1: doesn't have a flat side to catch the gales. It
Speaker 1: doesn't get weighed down by snow in the terer, it
Speaker 1: doesn't catch fire if it gets struck by lightning. Wire
Speaker 1: fencing is kind of a perfect solution for the planes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it you know, it doesn't last forever, but it
Speaker 1: certainly stands the test of time. I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of my childhood involved encountering old wire
Speaker 1: fences or barbed wire fences that no longer have any purpose.
Speaker 1: They're just there in the woods or you know, and
Speaker 1: they're just they have survived, while everything else is just
Speaker 1: a ghost of of whatever settlement it was a part of.
Speaker 1: It was one of my favorite kinds of things to
Speaker 1: discover as a good kid. You know, I would roam
Speaker 1: through the woods and you'd find like a half buried
Speaker 1: old barbed wire fence. Yeah, it's like that, maybe a
Speaker 1: sunken grave, and of course, you know, like a line
Speaker 1: of of buttercups that still come up marking some walkway
Speaker 1: to a lost house of some sort. But there is
Speaker 1: a downside to wire fences, which is that they're not
Speaker 1: super strong, especially if you know they might be strong
Speaker 1: for a human to try to get through. But imagine
Speaker 1: you are a bull or a bison. Yeah, large animals
Speaker 1: like this, a cow, bison, a horse, they can simply
Speaker 1: tear into it, make a mess of it, and maybe
Speaker 1: get tangled up in it. But in the fence itself
Speaker 1: would be reduced to shambles and would no longer serve
Speaker 1: its purpose. And and of course, if you were at
Speaker 1: all concerned about humans, you know, a wire fence like
Speaker 1: this is not going to really be uh, you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of an obstacle for humans either. So they
Speaker 1: quickly realized what was lacking here. Spikes, right, passive weapons,
Speaker 1: just just some static pokers to sit there and hurt
Speaker 1: you if you if you press too hard. So an
Speaker 1: American farmer and businessman named Joseph Glidden is often given
Speaker 1: credit for the invention of barbed wire, and he does
Speaker 1: play a very important role in the history of barbed wire,
Speaker 1: But it looks like there were a number of inventions
Speaker 1: of similar types of fencing material before Glidden swooped in.
Speaker 1: So we really need to take a pretty large step
Speaker 1: back before we get to Glidden. So we will get
Speaker 1: to him in a bit. One of the first things
Speaker 1: I thought we should mention since we're still sort of
Speaker 1: in the what came before phase, is the idea of
Speaker 1: live fencing or live fence. Specifically a species of plant
Speaker 1: known as Maclura pomifera, commonly known as the osage orange
Speaker 1: or the hedge apple tree. You ever seen a hedge apple? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're fun to kick down the road. Yeah. I never
Speaker 1: tried to eat one. I wonder what they taste like.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I never tried either. I bet they're nasty.
Speaker 1: This was a thorny hedge plant that could be and
Speaker 1: was used as a kind of natural barbed wire to
Speaker 1: form boundaries and barriers, but it had many problems. You
Speaker 1: could try to aligne your fields with osage orange, but
Speaker 1: it was difficult to maintain. It required a lot of trimming,
Speaker 1: like it can, you know, shoot out big branches all
Speaker 1: over the place, and it in in Krell's words, quote
Speaker 1: harbored noxious weeds. So the question is can you recreate
Speaker 1: some of the desirable qualities of this thorn hedge through
Speaker 1: industrial means or synthetic means. And despite the historical association
Speaker 1: between barbed wire and the American ranch land frontier, it
Speaker 1: seems that a number of French inventors preceded the Americans.
Speaker 1: There were at least two French patents on barbed wire
Speaker 1: that came before any patents in America, and then another
Speaker 1: one that came before most patents in America. So let's
Speaker 1: let's look at France for a second right now. Now.
Speaker 1: I will point out though that the Krell doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to think that there's necessarily any connection between the French
Speaker 1: and the American inventions. They have came up come up
Speaker 1: with these independently. So imagine it's one of those things
Speaker 1: you can you can ultimately explain just in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, the material science reaching a point where people
Speaker 1: could could innovate with it, or the demand whether there'd
Speaker 1: be a situation where this suddenly appears useful. And what's
Speaker 1: fascinating here is that the way that it's useful varies
Speaker 1: pretty greatly from Europe to the America's that's right. So
Speaker 1: in the year eighteen sixty there was a Frenchman named
Speaker 1: Lance Eugene Grassain Batilon who acquired a patent for quote
Speaker 1: grating of wire work for fences and other purposes. And
Speaker 1: I've got an illustration for you to look at here, Robert,
Speaker 1: but this consisted of quote, a system of twisted iron
Speaker 1: employing a flat thin wire known commercially as ribbon iron,
Speaker 1: that could be applied to everything that ought to be
Speaker 1: enclosed or fenced. And this, Krell says, this would include
Speaker 1: railing for parks, railroads, meadows, gardens, pavilions, and even trees. Like, God,
Speaker 1: imagine that world, you know, it's just a barbed wire
Speaker 1: fence for every tree. Yeah. Like, if it's not clear
Speaker 1: already that the focus here is not so much on
Speaker 1: wandering cattle but on people, yes, uh. And Krell says
Speaker 1: that most historians have kind of ignored Grassain Batilon, but
Speaker 1: his patent was the first to describe the common feature
Speaker 1: of twisted wire with sharp projections. Grassian Battalon called these
Speaker 1: projections bristling points, and Krell is careful to point out
Speaker 1: that gb here didn't describe the material as something that
Speaker 1: you would make fencing out of, but rather as something
Speaker 1: that would be mounted on top of a normal fence
Speaker 1: to make it harder to climb over, which is exactly
Speaker 1: how we see barbed wire used at And of course
Speaker 1: it's cousin razor wire used today, something you can put
Speaker 1: at the very top of a non barbed fence like
Speaker 1: you know, cyclone fencing, etcetera, to make it difficult to
Speaker 1: climb over. Right, So you want to put fencing around
Speaker 1: all the trees in your city or something, you put
Speaker 1: this on top of the fence around all the trees. Beautiful.
Speaker 1: But after this there were more frenchmen to follow with
Speaker 1: ideas for barbed wire. There was another guy named Louis
Speaker 1: Francois Janine who was awarded a patent in April eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. So five years later, UH was awarded a
Speaker 1: patent for barbed wire of a kind of different design.
Speaker 1: Here the fence would consider list of double twisted wire
Speaker 1: with diamond shaped barbs made out of flat pieces of
Speaker 1: sheet metal. So this isn't uh, this isn't gonna be
Speaker 1: a little like poker sticking out like thorns. This is
Speaker 1: going to be more like sharp flat pieces of metal
Speaker 1: embedded in the wire as it goes along, sort of
Speaker 1: little diamond shaped blades. Yeah. Well, one of the really
Speaker 1: interesting things to come out of researching this episode was
Speaker 1: just that how many different types of barbed wire have
Speaker 1: been devised? Hundreds? Yeah, it's it's it's amazing and We'll
Speaker 1: get more into some of the variety as we go here.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there were hundreds, just between like
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven and eighteen seventy four. Uh So, a
Speaker 1: later patent was filed by a brick manufacturer from Brittany.
Speaker 1: And not to be confusing, if you don't know, Brittany
Speaker 1: is in western France, It's not in Britain. Uh Brittany
Speaker 1: and Western France. And this guy was named Gilbert Gavellard.
Speaker 1: This was granted in August eighteen sixty seven, and it
Speaker 1: was for Gavellard's Brevede in Vineon, which describes a fence
Speaker 1: composed of runt says, oh my, my French has failing me.
Speaker 1: Here run says artificial, meaning artificial thorns. There would be
Speaker 1: things that would be uh quote caught between three strands
Speaker 1: of intertwined wire. Uh This brings to mind a description
Speaker 1: that that Krell shares. He he He discusses the powerful
Speaker 1: Washburn and Mowan Manufacturing company out of Massachusetts, which was
Speaker 1: a big like a major producer of barbed wire and
Speaker 1: of course a major marketer of barbed wire. They put
Speaker 1: put out some some gloriously over the top descriptions of
Speaker 1: of barbed wire the perfect fence, And one of the
Speaker 1: quotes from the Perfect Fences quote, the steel barb is
Speaker 1: nothing more than a thorn, the spur the animal instantly
Speaker 1: retreats from and thereafter carefully avoids. Yeah, it is compared
Speaker 1: to a thorn. Again and again emphasis on the natural. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was about to say the natural nature, the the
Speaker 1: natural nous of the thorn. Michael Kelly of New York,
Speaker 1: who received a patent for a barbed wire design on
Speaker 1: February eleven, eight sixty eight, writes of his invention quote,
Speaker 1: my invention relates to imparting defenses of wire a character
Speaker 1: approximating to that of a thorn hedge. I prefer to
Speaker 1: designate the fence so produced as a thorny fence. And
Speaker 1: you know, you read these arguments, and what could be
Speaker 1: more natural? You're not making something grossly artificial, um an industrial. No,
Speaker 1: You're you're taking something that the world does naturally, that
Speaker 1: vegetation does naturally, and just applying it a little more
Speaker 1: towards your specific aim. Well, yeah, I wonder if grass
Speaker 1: Saint Battalan was anticipating somebody like me who's horrified by
Speaker 1: the idea of a barbed wire fence around every tree.
Speaker 1: Because when he's talking about his proposal for tree guards,
Speaker 1: he writes that they quote maybe of double ribbon wire,
Speaker 1: which allows the addition of small wire points, and when
Speaker 1: these ribbons are twisted together, the wire points bristle in
Speaker 1: every direction and form spikes, imitating thorn branches. It's just
Speaker 1: saying it's like another part of the tree. It's just
Speaker 1: like a plant. Yeah, you can well imagine him today
Speaker 1: saying naturally trees grow upward and uh and reach towards
Speaker 1: the heavens. Why not also helped transmit wireless signals for
Speaker 1: our telephones? What could be more natural? Uh huh. But
Speaker 1: it's funny, I mean, and we're not even really brushing
Speaker 1: the surface of all the different marketing materials and patents
Speaker 1: and uh and advertisements and everything that described barbed wire
Speaker 1: as a thorn, that they were obsessed with this idea
Speaker 1: that it's just like a thorn bush, it's just like
Speaker 1: a brier. And I wonder if I wonder where a
Speaker 1: lot of these comparisons are coming from. I think some
Speaker 1: of it must be coming from like trying to make
Speaker 1: it seem more humane, more natural, less like some kind
Speaker 1: of gross metal claw that's invading your environment, right, And
Speaker 1: then some of the literature too, is really just pressing
Speaker 1: just how cultured it is, how essential it is to
Speaker 1: have fencing. The fencing is the thing that separates us
Speaker 1: from the savages, of which you know, as um as
Speaker 1: Krall points out, as just you know, steeped in the
Speaker 1: language of of of of you know, European colonists. Yes,
Speaker 1: And Krell also shows these advertisements from the time that
Speaker 1: that sort of envisioned barbed wire as the demarcation line
Speaker 1: of a kind of controlled arcadia where he where he
Speaker 1: would depict people walking along lanes where they would be
Speaker 1: surrounded by beautiful plants. And then also just like menageries
Speaker 1: of animals all mixed together, like elephants and camels and
Speaker 1: horses and dogs and stuff, all in the same pins,
Speaker 1: but they're all separated from these lanes by this elegant
Speaker 1: looking barbed wire. And and so it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it enforces this theme of like man versus beast
Speaker 1: and humankind versus nature, and we contame it and put
Speaker 1: it in the box and control it with these artificial
Speaker 1: with these industrial thorns, these thorns of human ingenuity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one point where Krell is dealing with this, uh,
Speaker 1: this illustration by one of the barbed wire um master's
Speaker 1: uh there of a of a cow trying to eat
Speaker 1: an apple, but is prevented from reaching that apple in
Speaker 1: this you know, otherwise, you know, a pristine garden environment
Speaker 1: by barbed wire fencing, which he compares then to the
Speaker 1: garden of Eden and the and the you know, the
Speaker 1: tree of knowledge of good and evil and so forth,
Speaker 1: which which is maybe a bit of a stretch, but
Speaker 1: but still I like, I like the argument if we
Speaker 1: just had one of those tree guards in the garden,
Speaker 1: there wouldn't have been a fall, right, Yeah, the fences
Speaker 1: order and uh and in the opposite of order is chaos. Right,
Speaker 1: So maybe we should take a quick break and then
Speaker 1: we come back. We can explore the year that the
Speaker 1: that the damn broke on the barbed wire flood. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, as we mentioned earlier, you had the
Speaker 1: Homestead Act of eighteen sixty two that really opened up
Speaker 1: the the American the Great American Desert. And it's in
Speaker 1: the wake of this that we began to see this
Speaker 1: this real uh, this real rush right right. It seems
Speaker 1: that something happened around the year eighteen sixty seven, because
Speaker 1: that's the year that a ton of barbed wire patents
Speaker 1: began popping up in the United States. We mentioned that
Speaker 1: the first patent was in France in eighteen sixty there
Speaker 1: was another one in eighteen sixty five, and then in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven the American floodgates open. There were so
Speaker 1: many barbed wire patents and designs that that popped up
Speaker 1: between around eighteen sixty seven and running into the mid
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies. And again we we mentioned earlier some of
Speaker 1: the demands that might have put pressure on this invention.
Speaker 1: You've got the continued colonization of the western prairie lands,
Speaker 1: the desire for farmers to keep animals in and or
Speaker 1: keep animals out of their fields in a place where
Speaker 1: lumber was scarce and the weather could easily damage a
Speaker 1: solid wooden fence. Anyway, wire fencing was kind of this
Speaker 1: perfect solution. And then the barbs. Meanwhile, we're there to
Speaker 1: discourage animals from knocking down the wire fencing. So who
Speaker 1: were some of these early American inventors of the industrial thorn.
Speaker 1: There are honestly too many to name here, but just
Speaker 1: to mention a few There was a guy named Alfonso
Speaker 1: Dab of Elizabeth Port, New Jersey, and he got a
Speaker 1: patent in April eighteen sixty seven for an improvement in
Speaker 1: pickets for fences and walls. And this would be like
Speaker 1: you've got a wrought iron mounting strip and you could
Speaker 1: put this on top of an existing fence or an
Speaker 1: existing wall, and this would be too in in Dab's words, quote,
Speaker 1: stop juveniles or others from climbing them. So these are
Speaker 1: these are anti human spikes that you would put on
Speaker 1: top of a fence. And you attached to a picture
Speaker 1: of this for our notes here, And really they look
Speaker 1: more like spearheads or bayonnets or something to that effect,
Speaker 1: less like like anything we would identify as barbed wire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are less for agriculture. These are something that would
Speaker 1: go on top of an existing fence and they would
Speaker 1: poke your butt if you tried to climb over. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then in the same year, but a little a
Speaker 1: few months later, in June eighteen sixty seven, a Lucien B.
Speaker 1: Smith of Kent, Ohio, came up with a barbed wire invention,
Speaker 1: which Smith describes thus lee quote posts of cast iron
Speaker 1: between which two or more stout wires are strung tightly,
Speaker 1: which wires are provided with spools a few feet apart
Speaker 1: and protected with short projecting points. Um and this is
Speaker 1: so quote offensive. This kind can be constructed very cheaply
Speaker 1: and will turn animals readily, as they can see it
Speaker 1: better than the ordinary wire fence, which has nothing attached
Speaker 1: to the wires to attract attention. And the animals will
Speaker 1: not counter the spurs or the spools, So this is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. Smith is saying. Not only will these
Speaker 1: spurs poke the animals if they press against the fence
Speaker 1: and and deter them there, it will also make the
Speaker 1: fence more visible to the animals, so that they won't
Speaker 1: need to poke up against it brush against it by accident.
Speaker 1: They'll be able to see it more easily than they
Speaker 1: would see just plain smooth wire. And Another early American
Speaker 1: patent for something counting as a barbed wire fence belonged
Speaker 1: to an inventor named William D. Hunt of New York
Speaker 1: In This was awarded in July eighteen sixty seven. The
Speaker 1: design here is a little bit different from the barbed
Speaker 1: wire we're familiar with. It was conceived as a farming
Speaker 1: and ranching innovation, and from Hunt's patent, he describes it
Speaker 1: as quote, the spurs fit the wire loosely so as
Speaker 1: to revolve easily upon it. By providing the wire with
Speaker 1: these sharp spur wheels, animals are deterred from pushing against
Speaker 1: the fence or attempting to break over it. And so
Speaker 1: this would not be twisted wire forming little artificial thorns,
Speaker 1: but rather it would be a smooth wire along which
Speaker 1: are strung like beads, these little kind of like saw
Speaker 1: blade looking things that can rotate freely around the wire,
Speaker 1: and then they would be held basically in place by
Speaker 1: the little studs on the wire. Yeah, kind of like
Speaker 1: little ninja throwing stars. Right. And you know this one also,
Speaker 1: this one looks kind of neat actually the illustration, and
Speaker 1: I can imagine it being kind of, you know, shiny
Speaker 1: and decorative if it was deployed in a way that
Speaker 1: would you know, perhaps be pleasing to the eyes, but also,
Speaker 1: coming back to that previous point, perhaps highly visible to animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think this might actually be a slightly more
Speaker 1: humane version of barbed wire. I'm not sure because I
Speaker 1: haven't tried it myself, but it would still provide a
Speaker 1: painful resistance if say, cows tried to press up against it.
Speaker 1: But because the sharp spur rotates freely around the wire,
Speaker 1: it seems a lot less likely than the barbed wire
Speaker 1: were used to catch and tear skin. Does that make sense, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not a hook going into you. It's just a
Speaker 1: sharp little thing, and and the fact that it rotates
Speaker 1: means it you know, it might hurt to press against it,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to stay in you. Now, there's
Speaker 1: a great thing that's quoted in Krell's book, which is
Speaker 1: Hunt describing his inspiration for the invention, which was basically
Speaker 1: he had had trouble with a very stubborn mule, and
Speaker 1: he said, quote, I made up my mind that one
Speaker 1: young mule couldn't beat me. So one day the idea
Speaker 1: suggested itself to me. Somehow, I don't know as I
Speaker 1: can tell how that a wire fence might be bird
Speaker 1: as I called it, then barbed as it has been
Speaker 1: changed too since, And I thought it would make a
Speaker 1: good thing. The reason why I thought so was that
Speaker 1: this mule would press against a thing and stand so
Speaker 1: obstinate it would hang against the board of a fence.
Speaker 1: And I thought, if I had something sharp, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: crowd it so hard. H So bird fencing colon a
Speaker 1: good thing, well at least a hunt it was, you know,
Speaker 1: when you got a stubborn mule. But there are many
Speaker 1: problems with the early designs for barbed wire fencing. A
Speaker 1: lot of these designs beginning in eighteen sixty seven might
Speaker 1: have been effective if they were used, but there were
Speaker 1: problems with the production. The barbs had to be created
Speaker 1: and placed along the wire by hand, and this was
Speaker 1: extremely laborious, potentially dangerous or painful for the worker. It
Speaker 1: would have made production of the wire slow and expensive
Speaker 1: because you're basically having to make a necklace every time
Speaker 1: he's stringing up some some wire if you're having to
Speaker 1: beat it with these little sharookens and so forth. Right, So,
Speaker 1: the next major revolution in barbed wire, I think, was
Speaker 1: less about how effective the specific wire design was at
Speaker 1: controlling animals and more more about how the design could
Speaker 1: be mass produced. And this is where Joseph Glidden comes in.
Speaker 1: This is where everything seems to change. In the year
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four, Joseph Glidden patented the first design and
Speaker 1: for barbed wire that would ever become a huge commercial success.
Speaker 1: According to Krell, in eighteen seventy four, just about ten
Speaker 1: thousand pounds of barbed wire were produced and sold. Six
Speaker 1: years later, in eighteen eighty, that figure was more than
Speaker 1: eighty million pounds. Uh, there's a there's a great line
Speaker 1: from Glinden's marketing. Uh. He claimed that this his wire
Speaker 1: was quote lighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust.
Speaker 1: Well that taps into another thing that I think is
Speaker 1: common in barbed wire marketing, which is, I think pretty
Speaker 1: straightforward appeals to kind of masculinity marketing. There's like very
Speaker 1: gendered marketing with barbed wire, you know what I mean. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was pretty obvious that it
Speaker 1: was going to be um, a male audience that was
Speaker 1: going to be buying this barbed wire for for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons. But yeah, there's this whole again, the
Speaker 1: man versus nature attaining of the wilderness um for the
Speaker 1: most part. But we will get into a major divide
Speaker 1: on that as we move forward. Sure, So what was
Speaker 1: Glidden's mass production method? Well, it involved taking two strands
Speaker 1: of wire and twisting them around each other while barbs
Speaker 1: were automatically strung along one one of the two wires
Speaker 1: and then held in place by the wrapping of the
Speaker 1: second wire. It's a pretty ingenious method. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: basically an example of what we we come to see
Speaker 1: as the standard in barbed wire, and that is the
Speaker 1: sense of barbed wire is a kind of not that
Speaker 1: is formed as opposed to something that is manufactured by
Speaker 1: the beating of spikes and so forth. Exactly. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: there was a huge amount of legal battling over barbed
Speaker 1: wire patents, but Glidden managed to come out ahead in
Speaker 1: all of this with his mass production method. His barbed
Speaker 1: wire not was also pretty straightforward. By the way, about
Speaker 1: the legal battle, there is a whole history here with
Speaker 1: this sort of battle royal that all these various American
Speaker 1: individuals will get into that in a minute. I was
Speaker 1: actually I was running across art goals in the New
Speaker 1: York Times from the day where they were had updates
Speaker 1: to the legal battle. Yeah, it was a crazy drama.
Speaker 1: And we'll even get to some poetry about that drama
Speaker 1: in a minute. Uh. Now, there's another interesting fact here,
Speaker 1: which is that there are some versions of the story
Speaker 1: that point out Joseph Glynden's wife Lucinda Warren Glidden's role
Speaker 1: in this. Apparently, Lucinda helped Joseph figure out the process
Speaker 1: that would set his barbed wire apart. So first, Glinton
Speaker 1: used his wife's hairpins to twist sharp points that he
Speaker 1: tried to attach to a piece of straight wire. But
Speaker 1: like many other barbed wire inventors before him, he came
Speaker 1: across a problem, which was that the hairpin barbs kept
Speaker 1: slipping down the length of the wire. They couldn't be
Speaker 1: held in place. So to describe what happened next, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from Krell quote. Turning next to a coffee
Speaker 1: meal retrieved from their kitchen, Glinden converted it in such
Speaker 1: a way that by cranking it he could produce a
Speaker 1: uniform barb. The problem of the sliding barbs was finally
Speaker 1: resolved when he hit upon the idea that a second
Speaker 1: wire might secure them if it were twisted around the first.
Speaker 1: To this end, he converted an old grindstone into a
Speaker 1: rudimentary twisting device, and, with the help of Lucinda, who
Speaker 1: turned the grindstone while he held the wire, proceeded to
Speaker 1: make the first sixty six feet of barbed wire in
Speaker 1: their backyard. Also thank you, husband for turning every device
Speaker 1: in our house into a barbed wire construction method. Yeah.
Speaker 1: From then on, the coffee taste like barbed wire. Now.
Speaker 1: Another interesting individual in all this was John Warrene Better
Speaker 1: Million Gates Boy, so named because it said that he'd
Speaker 1: take bets on whether cows could break through his wire. Uh.
Speaker 1: And apparently there was some criticism that he was maybe
Speaker 1: using really lazy cows or and I was reading some
Speaker 1: sort of back and forth in this, but either way,
Speaker 1: he became quite rich off the product, though he engaged
Speaker 1: apparently at times in the sale of quote moonshine wire,
Speaker 1: which if I'm understanding correctly, would have been like kind
Speaker 1: of like bootleg design wires barbed wire recipes that he
Speaker 1: wasn't actually uh you know, legally supposed to be selling.
Speaker 1: The amount of anguish over bootleg or like scalped barbed
Speaker 1: wire is one of the most shocking things I discovered
Speaker 1: in this. Like there was great passion about the intellectual
Speaker 1: property disputes of barbed wire in the eighteen seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: And and this is because Glidden was not the only
Speaker 1: person to invent to invent a barbed wire in the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies or or to invent an effective mass production
Speaker 1: system for barbed wire. There was another inventor named Jacob
Speaker 1: Has who came up with a similar process to Glinten's
Speaker 1: in the same year, but Glinden won the legal battle
Speaker 1: over precedence. In fact, there were at least three inventors,
Speaker 1: So you had Glidden, you had Jacob Hash, and then
Speaker 1: there was a hardware dealer named Isaac L. L. Wood,
Speaker 1: who were all involved in a long running I P
Speaker 1: dispute after they each tried to file patents for barbed wire.
Speaker 1: After the three of them all visited the Decab, Illinois
Speaker 1: County Fair of eighteen seventy three, where the three of
Speaker 1: them all saw a display by a guy named Henry
Speaker 1: Rose which included a long strip of wood that had
Speaker 1: barbs attached to it, which could be used to keep
Speaker 1: an animal from pressing against defense. And so all three
Speaker 1: of them looked at this idea of Roses so like
Speaker 1: a long wooden dowel with barbs on it. All three
Speaker 1: of them independently had the idea that it would make
Speaker 1: more sense to do the same thing, but put the
Speaker 1: barbs on a length of wire instead of a wooden rod,
Speaker 1: and then all three set to work trying to acquire
Speaker 1: a patent, and Glinden just happened to turn out the
Speaker 1: big winner of this long and acrimonious dispute. But I
Speaker 1: think it's funny that like they're all fighting, they're fighting
Speaker 1: each other, and like they all basically got the idea
Speaker 1: from this other guy, that they just all had the
Speaker 1: insight that wire would work better than a than a
Speaker 1: wooden rod. But at some point the defeat inventor Jacob Hayes,
Speaker 1: who you know, who lost this intellectual property battle to
Speaker 1: Joseph Glinton. He wrote a poem called be as Happy
Speaker 1: as you Can that is quoted in Krell's book This
Speaker 1: is so good, This life is not all sunshine as
Speaker 1: barbed fence scalpers have found. The crosses they bear are heavy,
Speaker 1: and under them lies no crown. And while they're seeking
Speaker 1: the roses, the thorns full offt they scan. Yet let them,
Speaker 1: though they're wounded, be as happy as they can. It's
Speaker 1: like the Bobby Fuller Four's letter dance of barbed wire.
Speaker 1: And in this we do have the the the crown
Speaker 1: of Christ's damagery as well. Absolutely, But what comes out
Speaker 1: of this is that Glidden's version of barbed wire is
Speaker 1: probably correctly understood to be the progenitor of most existing
Speaker 1: types of barbed wire today. Yeah. In summary via Crell,
Speaker 1: it is accurate to say that barbed wire quote was
Speaker 1: born in France, independently conceived in the Eastern States of America,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, Ohio, and New York, and grew up on
Speaker 1: the prairies and planes where for different reasons, farmers especially
Speaker 1: and later ranchers turned increasingly defensing. Alright, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a break, but when we come back, we will continue
Speaker 1: to discuss barbed wire, and we'll even get into uh
Speaker 1: one or two examples of barbed wire used in a
Speaker 1: way that we might well describe as uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: not evil. Yeah, I think that would be accurate. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So there are again many different varieties of
Speaker 1: barbed wire, and and one book that is that is
Speaker 1: often mentioned in UH in writings about the history of
Speaker 1: barbed wire is a book that was published in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven titled The bobbed Wire Bible. That's bob b
Speaker 1: O B B E d by Jack Glover published in
Speaker 1: seventies seven, and I think earlier as well, but I
Speaker 1: think maybe the addition I was looking at for was
Speaker 1: from seventy seven and it contains illustrations of seven hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty four different steel barbed wire knots, including things
Speaker 1: like scuts, wooden block, and the shin round line lock
Speaker 1: barb uh and uh. If you if you can find
Speaker 1: a copy of this or just find some images of
Speaker 1: pages from this book, it's pretty fascinating because their their
Speaker 1: neat little illustrations and it just really drives home the
Speaker 1: diversity that went into envisioning all the ways that you
Speaker 1: could create a barb out of out of metal wiring.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how much human imagination went into lengths of
Speaker 1: wire that can hurt you. Yeah. Now, a particularly nasty
Speaker 1: variation on all this is we mentioned razor wire briefly earlier,
Speaker 1: or concertina wire, which is either the same or very similar,
Speaker 1: depending on how specific you get in your barbed wire terminology.
Speaker 1: I thought concertina wire had to do with like how
Speaker 1: it was coiled. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, but sometimes the
Speaker 1: words are Sometimes people say constantine wire, which is just
Speaker 1: a perversion of the term. But but in these were
Speaker 1: really getting into anti human barbed wire varieties that you
Speaker 1: usually see used in military penal or border settings. The
Speaker 1: development and widespread use of this sort of wire really
Speaker 1: goes back to the First and Second World Wars, where
Speaker 1: they were used in trench warfare environments and other fortifications. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this does seem to be a change over time
Speaker 1: that like early on, most of the messaging about barbed
Speaker 1: wire is, as Kroll points out, this culture versus nature thing.
Speaker 1: It's humankind versus the untamed animal world, and you're putting
Speaker 1: these barriers in place to keep the animals in or
Speaker 1: keep the animals out. Especially over the course of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, barbed wire is it takes a much darker
Speaker 1: turn and we see it more and more deployed specifically
Speaker 1: for uses on humans to keep the humans in or
Speaker 1: to keep the humans out. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, one we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier about like masculinity in the marketing and acceptance
Speaker 1: of barbed wire. One huge factor of the American West
Speaker 1: was that while farmers were very much in favor of
Speaker 1: barbed wire, cattlemen were not. Because what does it do
Speaker 1: when you start throwing up miles and miles of barbed
Speaker 1: wire fencing, Well, it disrupts the open grazing lands. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it prevents cattle and horses from from moving around
Speaker 1: freely or you know, from cow prevents cowboys from moving
Speaker 1: a herd across a great distances. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: cattle and horses could get pretty messed up in barbed wire.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's one thing that is often kind
Speaker 1: of uh skimmed over in the in the marketing material.
Speaker 1: Is that is that, yeah, the stuff can really cut
Speaker 1: up an animal and or a human and uh and
Speaker 1: and put them in some pretty put them in dire shape. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's specifically a lot of the early advertising
Speaker 1: was trying to be misleading. That's why it kept emphasizing
Speaker 1: the thorn thing. It was. I think it was trying
Speaker 1: to suggest your animals will not get hurt. You know,
Speaker 1: they will just uh, you know, it will just deter them.
Speaker 1: It's just true, we're just strategically deploying something that they
Speaker 1: would otherwise encounter naturally. But that's not really quite the case.
Speaker 1: Um So, cattleman did not really take kindly to barbed
Speaker 1: wire for a very long time. It was also apparently
Speaker 1: decried by Texans is not only cruel and alien to
Speaker 1: the culture of the open range, but also as um
Speaker 1: as Krell points out quote a Yankee scheme to benefit
Speaker 1: the industrial North, which I don't know. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can you can certainly understand that point of view, right
Speaker 1: because look at some of the places it's coming from,
Speaker 1: So some of the birthplaces of the barbed wire industry.
Speaker 1: You could easily see it's like, well, this is some
Speaker 1: stuff that's made up North, and they're bringing it down here,
Speaker 1: and they're just selling it to all these farmers, and
Speaker 1: it's just cutting up our land. And so this is
Speaker 1: this is like a whole part of of you know,
Speaker 1: sort of wild West history. I guess it wasn't that
Speaker 1: familiar with, but cattleman would would sometimes get fed up
Speaker 1: with it, and they'd go and they just cut down
Speaker 1: like miles of barb wired fencing, sometimes as part of
Speaker 1: masked gangs working at night. And these masked gangs sometimes
Speaker 1: even had cool gang titles, um, And then they at
Speaker 1: first it was illegal fencing, but then they would also
Speaker 1: use these vigilante powers against legal fencing as well. And
Speaker 1: in terms of just sort of the humane or inhumane
Speaker 1: aspect of barbed wire, you had varieties of more humane
Speaker 1: barbed wire designs that were rolled out the idea of
Speaker 1: being that would be easier for a cattle to uh
Speaker 1: to to be freed from them. Uh. Some one variety
Speaker 1: I was looking at in particular had blocks of wood
Speaker 1: that were in set in the wire as well. But
Speaker 1: this ended up not really taking off. And I imagine
Speaker 1: a big part of it is that it's just more
Speaker 1: manufacturing required um either on the industrial end or on
Speaker 1: the farmer's end, and therefore it just wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 1: picked up easier to stick with the crueler product in
Speaker 1: this case. Also, Krall points out that the use of
Speaker 1: barbed wire against humans and animals led to a micro
Speaker 1: industry of barbed wire liniments and antiseptics such as silver
Speaker 1: pine healing oil or Dr Cox liniaments and antiseptic among
Speaker 1: others that basically like you know, kind of snake oil
Speaker 1: esque ointments. They may have done some good, but the
Speaker 1: healing power of Doctor Cox is on your barbed wire.
Speaker 1: But our animals will be healthy as ever exactly. But
Speaker 1: I mean it really shows you like there was there
Speaker 1: were enough people and animals getting cut up by this
Speaker 1: stuff that there was a like a side industry of
Speaker 1: selling specialized ointments to deal with all those cuts. To
Speaker 1: humans and livestock. Yeah, totally. And as long as we're
Speaker 1: talking about the cultural impact, I mean, obviously, barbed wire
Speaker 1: I think came to be seen as one of the
Speaker 1: most iconic technologies symbolizing the brutal conquest of the North
Speaker 1: American continent from from the native peoples who lived there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where apparently the name the Devil's rope comes from.
Speaker 1: That was one of the the names for it that
Speaker 1: was used by the native peoples of North America. Some
Speaker 1: of the Plains tribes called the Devil's rope. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and speaking too of the of the pre colonial um
Speaker 1: uh you know a West, it's not only humans and
Speaker 1: domestic herds that were impacted, but also the American bison,
Speaker 1: which of course more famously suffered from over hunting, hunted
Speaker 1: to the you know, the brink of extinction, but also
Speaker 1: this ever expanding use of barbed wire also cut them
Speaker 1: off from vital grazing and watering areas. So while the
Speaker 1: story of the invention of barbed wire is an interesting one,
Speaker 1: it's hard not to be left, uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: when you just think about the impact of this technology
Speaker 1: left with a pretty depressing uh landscape. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it it does literally make a landscape look depressing, uh,
Speaker 1: at least the more you think about it. It's like, again,
Speaker 1: barbed wire is something especially if you've grown up around it,
Speaker 1: you can you can take it for granted, especially if
Speaker 1: it is not used so much against your you you know,
Speaker 1: if it's used sort of if it's used against livestock
Speaker 1: or again against um, you know, people in an outline
Speaker 1: group that you are not a part of. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: can you can people lying to its impact as well.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, for the most part, it's um, it's
Speaker 1: not an invention that I would really classify in the
Speaker 1: good category. However, there a couple of examples of of
Speaker 1: of uses for barbed wire, uh, both of which surprised me.
Speaker 1: The first of which is that while barbed wire couldn't
Speaker 1: transmit a signal as well as traditional telephone wire, which
Speaker 1: is you know, insulated copper wiring. Uh. You still saw
Speaker 1: this case in the early nineteen thirties where rural farmers
Speaker 1: were some of the early adopters of this new technology
Speaker 1: of telephone lines, and for a few years they would
Speaker 1: they were actually using barbed wire because they had to
Speaker 1: build out their own telephone collectives and without access to
Speaker 1: easy access to all that insulated copper wire they had
Speaker 1: access to the to the barbed wire, they just string
Speaker 1: the barbed wire instead, which is which is in our
Speaker 1: I wonder what this call sounded like, Well, probably pretty rough,
Speaker 1: probably just just clear enough to get by. Um. And
Speaker 1: then this is like just a few years before then
Speaker 1: it was replaced and also at that point of farmers
Speaker 1: were no longer required to string their own wiring. Now
Speaker 1: a more surprising use, though it was, is multiple cases
Speaker 1: that came across off in which barbed wire has been
Speaker 1: used for science. Um, so you have a great many
Speaker 1: studies that utilize strands of barbed wire. Usually it's like
Speaker 1: a single strand to study bear populations. So basically what
Speaker 1: you have is a situation where researchers will use single
Speaker 1: strands of barbed wire to obtain for samples from wild
Speaker 1: bear populations for DNA testing. And this also entails baiting
Speaker 1: them a little bit, which according to Tom Dixon of
Speaker 1: Montana Outdoors, this would be a bottle that contains quote
Speaker 1: year old a year old fermented mix of cow blood
Speaker 1: and fish guts, which to human is pretty disgusting, but
Speaker 1: to a bear worth checking out. So yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is fascinating. So the idea, of course is not
Speaker 1: to to hurt the bear, and really not even necessarily
Speaker 1: to to like scrape into its skin, but to catch
Speaker 1: some of its fur. This ample, you know, fur armor
Speaker 1: that like a black bear has on its body. So
Speaker 1: the barrel come to check out the bait, and when
Speaker 1: it does so, the the barbs on the barbed wire
Speaker 1: will catch some of the fur and pull it free.
Speaker 1: And then researchers are able to use that fur and
Speaker 1: you know, look at the DNA and use it to understand,
Speaker 1: you know, basically the shape of wild bear populations. So
Speaker 1: we can at least we can put that. Then another
Speaker 1: check under the positive uses of barbed wire in world
Speaker 1: history a way of caring for bear populations. I like it,
Speaker 1: but that's all I have. Sorry, it's just those two.
Speaker 1: That's those are the only examples there. It's also fun
Speaker 1: to play with, is it barbed wire? Kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know. When I was a kid, backyard wrestlers were
Speaker 1: playing with No, no, no, not not for it's I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's just like kind of cool, like whip
Speaker 1: around and stuff. Oh well, I guess, um, I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: it's fun to play with in the same way that
Speaker 1: like a good sticks fun to play with. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't. Here's the thing I do remember, like kids,
Speaker 1: when when I was a kid in Newfoundland, Canada, the
Speaker 1: other kids, the older kids, the dangerous kids, were into
Speaker 1: two things. Michael Jackson. Uh those red uh leather jackets,
Speaker 1: you know, like Michael Jackson. Really yeah, those were very popular.
Speaker 1: And then everybody was making They were making like a
Speaker 1: like a mace out of a stick of wood that
Speaker 1: had nails driven through it. So um, you know, they're
Speaker 1: just it was like The Lord of the Flies. I
Speaker 1: guess it sounds like an eighties movie. Yeah, it was it.
Speaker 1: This was the eighties. Were they on rollerblades? No, because
Speaker 1: the roads were all gravel where I was. I don't
Speaker 1: know what you would have done with a roller blade there,
Speaker 1: But I don't remember there being a lot of barbed
Speaker 1: wire around it. If there had been, I'm sure they
Speaker 1: would have wrapped it around their makeshift melee weapons. Did
Speaker 1: they answer to Lord Humongous? They I'm sure they knew
Speaker 1: Lord Humongous he was. I think he was pretty popular
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, but yeah, I think that would
Speaker 1: have been the window for me encountering people playing with
Speaker 1: barbed wire. For the most part, I think I was
Speaker 1: always like a little wary of it because when I
Speaker 1: would encounter barbed wire, either there was either there was
Speaker 1: a very good chance it was either like super rusty,
Speaker 1: uh and and therefore kind of icky, or it might
Speaker 1: be electrified and therefore I really don't want to touch it.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's that's another feature we didn't even mention
Speaker 1: about barbed wires that's strong properly, then you can put
Speaker 1: an electric current through it, which adds to its effectiveness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think in some cases us to like especially
Speaker 1: in ranching or you know, livestock control whatever, places where
Speaker 1: you would once have barbed wire have been replaced mostly
Speaker 1: with electric fence because if you have an electric current
Speaker 1: going through it, you need not have actual barbs because
Speaker 1: you have electric barbs. But I will come back to
Speaker 1: what I said earlier, is that I think that our
Speaker 1: attitudes toward barbed wire, you know, they're going to really
Speaker 1: revolve around our own experience and like the area in
Speaker 1: which we encountered it. So I'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: listeners out there, like what, how how do you interact
Speaker 1: with barbed wire, Like, what is what comes to mind
Speaker 1: when you think of barbed wire? And to what extent
Speaker 1: is it influenced by the way it is used in
Speaker 1: your rural setting and your urban setting? Uh as it's
Speaker 1: used in say you know, prison environments, or you know
Speaker 1: border environments, or uh used in in in uh you
Speaker 1: know in warfare, fortifications, etcetera. I'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: everybody on these on these points. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Invention, including
Speaker 1: that that episode that we did on walls, for example,
Speaker 1: you can head on over to invention pod dot com.
Speaker 1: That will shoot you over to the I heart listing
Speaker 1: for this show. But you can find us absolutely anywhere
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to
Speaker 1: be Just a rate you and subscribe. Those are some
Speaker 1: acts you can you can do that really help us out. Also,
Speaker 1: tell a friend, if you enjoy Invention, tell another human
Speaker 1: being about the show and perhaps they'll enjoy it as well.
Speaker 1: And I'm suddenly remembering we didn't even get into tattoos.
Speaker 1: How many tattoos of barbed wire are there? And then
Speaker 1: I wonder are people really appreciating all the varieties of
Speaker 1: barbed wire. If you're thinking of getting a barbed wire tattoo,
Speaker 1: stop and go, get go, Get that book that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier with the seven hundred and something different varieties
Speaker 1: of barbed wire, and just just look around a little bit,
Speaker 1: do a little shopping, a little window shopping before you
Speaker 1: decide on a particular brand of barbed wire that is
Speaker 1: gonna be tattooed around your bicep. Get one of the
Speaker 1: French varieties. Yeah. Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I
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