The Great Plains, Second Edition by Walter Prescott Webb

Author:Walter Prescott Webb [Webb, Walter Prescott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: TX), United States, OH, SD, NM, NE, HIS036090 HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, KS, MN, ND, IN, WI), OK, Midwest (IA; IL; IN; KS; MI; MN; MO; ND; NE; OH; SD; WI), IL, Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), MI, History, State & Local, HIS036130 HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Southwest (AZ, MO
ISBN: 9781496231338
Google: ezlyEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2022-08-15T20:31:04+00:00

28. The evolution of barbed wire—preliminary efforts (see page 298). (Courtesy Industrial Museum, American Steel and Wire Company)

Whether or not Glidden was the inventor of barbed wire is not important; it is pretty evident, however, that he was the first to make a success of it in a country that needed it. Glidden first made barbed wire by putting barbs on a single strand. The story of how he learned to twist two wires is as follows: One day some wires became entangled, and in picking them up he conceived the idea that two wires could be twisted together so as to hold the barbs in place and to keep them from rotating. “He was thinking about a method of doing this when his eye lighted on the grindstone, and he formed the idea of twisting the wire by means of the small crank on the grindstone. He asked his wife to turn the grindstone, which she did.” According to this a common grindstone was the first machine to be used for twisting wire. Another account of early manufacture is given by Andrew Johnson, a farm hand employed by Glidden in the early years.

I was employed as a farm hand by Joseph Glidden for about three years, and during this time he invented and began to make barb wire. . . . In the winter of the year when the patent was obtained, Mr. Glidden began to make this wire, and as I was a farm hand I helped him in nearly everything that was done. In the evening, in the kitchen of his house, I would make the barbs, or brads; these were made on an old-fashioned coffee mill which had been changed for this work by P. W. Vaughan, a blacksmith. This coffee mill was an old-fashioned type that was screwed up to the wall. The casing had been cut away and two pins inserted on the end of the shaft, one pin in center and another placed from it a distance of about a diameter of the wire, so that when the crank was turned the outside pin would coil the brad wire around the center pin.30 I would judge the amount of wire sufficient to make a barb and would operate this device, cutting the wire only once for each barb. For twisting the cable, we took the crank from an old grindstone; at this time we were working in the barn, and would make about forty feet of barb wire at a time; there was a wood framework made of 2 x 6’s and braced, and the grindstone was set in one of them, the wire being stretched to the crank from the other post. The barbs were slipped on to one of the wires by hand and set tightly by striking them a blow with a hammer against an iron block. The crank was then turned, twisting the two-strand wires. . . . The next spring, after having made wire in the barn all winter, we made it out of doors in the woods, part of the time on Mr.

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