When Was Fencing Wire Invented?

On October 27, 1873, a De Kalb, Illinois, farmer named Joseph Glidden submits an application to the U.S. Patent Office for his clever new design for a fencing wire with sharp barbs, an invention that will forever change the face of the American West.

What was before barbed wire?

Wire fences before barbed wire consisted of a single strand of wire that could easily be broken by cattle. Without fencing to keep cattle in, the bovines grazed freely competing for grass and water and destroying crops like wheat. Every year, cattle owners led their herds to slaughter houses unhindered by wire fencing.

Did a nun invent barbed wire?

It was a nun they say invented barbed wire. Barbed wire has been an important motif in American literature since Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, published only fifteen years after the invention of the paradoxical fence that protects and controls animals by threatening injury.