History of Barb Wire use mainly to stop Range Wars in Timelines

Englishman Richard Newton brought barbed wire to the Argentine pampas in 1845.^[8]

Fencing consisting of flat and thin wire was first proposed in France, by Leonce Eugene Grassin-Baledans in 1860. His design consisted of bristling points, creating a fence that was painful to cross. In April 1865 Louis François Janin proposed a double wire with diamond-shaped metal barbs; he was granted a patent. Michael Kelly from New York had a similar idea, and proposed that the fencing should be used specifically for deterring animals.^[9]

More patents followed, and in 1867 alone there were six patents issued for barbed wire. Only two of them addressed livestock deterrence, one of which was from American Lucien B. Smith of Ohio.^[10] Before 1870, westward movement in the USA was largely across the plains with little or no settlement occurring. After theAmerican Civil War the plains were extensively settled, consolidating America's dominance over them.^[11]

Ranchers moved out on the plains, and needed to fence their land in against encroaching farmers and other ranchers. The railroads throughout the growing West needed to keep livestock off their tracks, and farmers needed to keep stray cattle from trampling their crops.^[12] 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. A cost-effective alternative was needed to make cattle operations profitable.^[13]

The 1873 meeting and initial development

An early handmade specimen of Glidden's "The Winner" on display at the Barbed Wire History Museum inDeKalb, Illinois.

Patent drawing for Joseph F. Glidden's Improvement to barbed wire

The "Big Four" in barbed wire wereJoseph Glidden, Jacob Haish, Charles Francis Washburn, and Isaac L. Ellwood.^[14] Glidden, a farmer in 1873 and the first of the "Big Four," is often credited for designing a successful sturdy barbed wire product, but he let others popularize it for him. Glidden's idea came from a display at a fair inDeKalb, Illinois in 1873, by Henry B. Rose. Rose had patented "The Wooden Strip with Metallic Points" in May 1873.^[15]

This was simply a wooden block with wire protrusions designed to keep cows from breaching the fence. That day, Glidden was accompanied by two other men, Isaac L. Ellwood, a hardware dealer and Jacob Haish, a lumber merchant. Like Glidden, they both wanted to create a more durable wire fence with fixed barbs. Glidden experimented with a grindstone to twist two wires together to hold the barbs on the wire in place. They were created from experiments with a coffee mill from his home.^[15]

Later Glidden was joined by Ellwood who knew his design could not compete with Glidden's for which he applied for a patent in October 1873.^[16] Meanwhile, Haish, who had already secured several patents for barbed wire design, applied over a week before Glidden for a patent on his third type of wire, the S barb, and accused Glidden of interference, deferring Glidden's approval for his patented wire nicknamed "The Winner" until November 24, 1874.^[17]

Barbed wire production greatly increased with Glidden and Ellwood's establishment of the Barb Fence Company in DeKalb following the success of "The Winner". The company's success attracted the attention of Charles Francis Washburn, Vice President of Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company, an important producer of plain wire in the Eastern U.S. Washburn visited De Kalb and convinced Glidden to sell his stake in the Barb Wire Fence Company, while Ellwood stayed in DeKalb and renamed the company I.L Ellwood & Company of DeKalb.^[18]

Promotion and consolidationEdit

In the late 1870s, John Warne Gates of Illinois began to promote barbed wire, now a proven product, in the lucrative markets of Texas. At first, Texans were hesitant, as they feared that cattle might be harmed, or that the North was somehow trying to make profits from the South. There was also conflict between the farmers who wanted fencing and the ranchers who were losing the open range.^[12]

Demonstrations by Gates in San Antonio in 1876 showed that the wire could keep cattle contained, and sales then increased dramatically. Gates eventually parted company with Ellwood and became a barbed wire baron in his own right. Throughout the height of barbed wire sales in the late 19th century, Washburn, Ellwood, Gates, and Haish competed with one another, but Ellwood and Gates eventually joined forces again to create the American Steel and Wire Company, later acquired by The U.S. Steel Corporation.^[19]

Between 1873 and 1899 there were as many as 150 companies manufacturing barbed wire to cash in on the demand in the West: investors were aware that the business did not require much capital and it was considered that almost anyone with enough determination could make a profit from manufacture of a new wire design.^[20] There was then a sharp decline in the number of manufacturing firms, as many were consolidated into larger companies, notably the American Steel and Wire Company, formed by the merging of Gates's and Washburn's and Ellwood's industries.

Smaller companies were wiped out because of economies of scale and the smaller pool of consumers available to them, compared to the larger corporations. The American Steel and Wire Company established in 1899 employed vertical integration: it controlled all aspects of production from producing the steel rods to making many different wire and nail products from the same steel; although later part of U.S. Steel, the production of barbed wire would still be a major source of revenue

Another inventor, William Edenborn, a German immigrant who later settled inWinn Parish, Louisiana, patented a machine which simplified the making of barbed wire and cut the unit price of production from seventeen to three cents per pound. His particular wire is the "humane" version that did not harm cattle. The original wire was sharp-teethed and contributed to western range wars. Edenborn's company in time supplied 75 percent of the barbed wire in the United States. A wire nail machine that he also patented reduced the price of wire nails from eight to two cents per pound.^[21][22]