
The history of barbed wire - curtis
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2015/03/23/_99_invisible_roman_mars_the_history_of_barbed_wire.html
======
GuiA
This is one of the most interesting parts of the article to me:

 _Right around the same time that barbed wire was invented, Alexander Graham
Bell invented the telephone. At first, telephone companies were laying
telephone wire in cities, but they weren’t interested in the rural market. But
farmers also needed phones, which meant that they needed a network of wires to
connect the farms._

 _Barbed wire fences could serve this purpose. The barbed wire couldn’t
transmit a signal quite as clearly as a nice insulated copper wire, but for
many years, it did the trick. A dozen or so farms might be connected on one
system; for about $25, farmers could buy a kit to rig themselves into the
network. In 1907 there were 18,000 independent telephone cooperatives serving
nearly 1.5 million people. Because of this, farmers were some of the earliest
adopters of telephone technology._

A great reminder that technological advances don't happen in a vacuum, and new
innovations spread best if they can work over already existing
infrastructures.

~~~
steverb
Around 1998 I was working for a small mom and pop computer/networking shop and
had a customer successfully run Ethernet over barbed wire so he could network
between his house (where the main computer was) and his barn.

It was about a fifty foot run at 1Mbps. He did have issues when it rained,
once the posts got wet enough to ground the wires.

~~~
na85
How on earth did he manage that? Didn't the barbs cause shorts where they
touched the individual twisted metal strands?

~~~
vacri
Barbs are wrapped around the twin wires, yes, but the twin wires are already
touching each other. But a fence will usually have more than one strand of
wire (though not always barbed) - I imagine one stand was Tx and a different
strand was Rx.

~~~
steverb
Yes. That was more or less how he did it.

Spliced some coax to alligator clips. One strand for the inner, one strand for
the outer (if memory serves).

------
jsherry
If you have a taste for stories that span the spectrum of airport carpeting
fanboys to those with more historical significance such as the story here, I
cannot recommend the 99% invisible podcast enough.

Web -
[http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible](http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible)

iTunes:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id394775318](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id394775318)

~~~
wlesieutre
To list a couple others off the top of my head: SF's public stairways, NYC's
cow tunnels, sound design for televised sports, Plimsoll lines, elevator
brakes, architecture for deaf people.

I don't know if I'd call it a "spectrum" so much as a "crazy pile of
everything design related." Great show.

------
pimlottc
Any particular reason this is being linked to slate.com instead of 99 Percent
Invisible's own site? There does not appear to be any additional content and
they are missing a correction update.

[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/devils-
rope/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/devils-rope/)

------
relaytheurgency
_Glidden’s design took off, and by 1876, his company was producing nearly 3
million pounds of barbed wire annually._

Sentences like this always bother me. Of what use is this information? Barbed
wire isn't used as a counterweight. How much fence is 3 million pounds?

~~~
masklinn
Basic barbed wire is ~80 lbs per quarter-mile roll (1,320 ft) according to
[http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/resmgmt/publist/300Series/307100-1....](http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/resmgmt/publist/300Series/307100-1.pdf)

So 3 million lbs would be 9375 miles, or 15000km

~~~
asavadatti
15,000km makes more sense than 3 million lbs.

------
geoffbrown2014
They made a documentary about barbed wire and Glidden and the town where he
manufactured it Dekalb, Illinois. Its called Barbed Wire Pioneers.

~~~
rsuelzer
I briefly attended Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, this article
brought back many "fond" memories of attending college in a corn field where
barbed wire was a source of pride.

------
elevensies
The conflict between cowboys and farmers is still going strong over 100 years
later:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff)

~~~
jessaustin
I would characterize that more as a freeloader deciding he wasn't being
subsidized _enough_ by the taxpayer, then declining to pay the tiny pittance
the BLM levies for the privilege of overgrazing the deserts of the West. That
he was able to hoodwink a bunch of city slickers eager to signal their
"conservatism" by opposing the gub'ment no matter what, says more about them
than about him.

------
gagege
Almost every time a 99% Invisible episode comes out, I can expect an article
about the same thing pop up on HN a week later. Kinda funny.

