0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of iHeartRadio.

0:11

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly

0:14

Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy,

0:16

I don't know how this subject got on my list. Okay,

0:20

it's been there for a while, and it's one

0:22

of those things I keep. We

0:24

both have talked about keeping lists. I'm real bad

0:26

about having two lists

0:29

going because one is on my phone and

0:31

one is handwritten. Yeah, And I

0:33

was looking at the one on my phone and I have scrolled

0:35

past Joseph Glidden's name

0:37

many times and then I was like, wait,

0:40

what did he do? And I looked it back up, and I'm like, oh, yeah,

0:42

we should talk about him. Yeah,

0:44

because this is a good story of how

0:46

a commonplace item in our world came

0:48

to be. It's also

0:50

an item that's had a lot of influence. It's

0:53

a story with a contentious and lengthy

0:55

legal battle, but the good news

0:58

is overall this is a pretty upbeat one. Like

1:00

the ending of that legal battle doesn't,

1:03

of course play out to everyone's delight, but

1:05

there seems to be a pretty good day New Mont. So

1:08

I thought it would be a good day

1:10

to talk about Joseph Glidden and

1:12

the invention of barbed wire. So

1:14

Joseph Glidden was born on January

1:17

eighteenth, eighteen thirteen, in Charlestown,

1:20

New Hampshire. His parents

1:22

were David and Polly Heard Glidden,

1:24

and David was a farmer. Eventually

1:27

the family moved to Orleans

1:29

County, New York. Joseph at that point

1:31

was still a baby this is west

1:33

of Rochester. As

1:35

a boy, he did go to school, although

1:38

once Joseph got to his teenage

1:40

years, he only went for part of the year

1:43

so that he would be available for farm work

1:45

the rest of the time. Yeah, basically he was

1:47

a winter semester only student at

1:49

that point, and when he got older

1:51

he attended Middlebury Academy in what

1:53

is now Wyoming County, New York, and

1:56

then he went on to Lema, New York for

1:58

seminary. Joseph his

2:00

first career was teaching, and that was something

2:02

he did for several years. But

2:05

sometime after eighteen thirty four, so when

2:07

he was still in his early twenties, he decided

2:10

to move back to Orleans County, New York

2:12

and start working for his father on the family

2:14

farm. And he stayed there doing

2:17

that for the better part of a decade. I

2:19

have seen accounts that say he was there

2:21

eight years and some that mentioned nine. Unclear

2:24

when he arrived, so it's hard to say which of those

2:26

is accurate. But at the age of twenty

2:28

four, Gliddon married a woman named Clarissa

2:31

Foster, and over the course of a few years,

2:34

Joseph and Clarissa had two sons together,

2:36

Virgil and Homer. In

2:38

eighteen forty two, as Joseph was approaching

2:41

thirty, he decided to set out on his

2:43

own again, although his brother

2:45

Josiah was with him. The

2:47

two of them traveled west from New

2:49

York with two threshing machines,

2:51

and they picked up work as they went. After

2:54

several months of travel, they landed in Dacab

2:57

County, Illinois. There

2:59

the cannect did with their cousin Russell

3:01

Huntley. Huntley had some land

3:04

to sell, and Joseph was interested. He

3:07

bought six hundred acres from his cousin,

3:09

and he envisioned that he and

3:11

Clarissa could be raising a family there.

3:14

Clarissa had stayed behind in New York

3:17

while Joseph had sought out the place they would

3:19

settle, and in eighteen forty three,

3:21

she joined her husband in Illinois, and

3:24

while this should have been the start of a really

3:26

happy time in their lives, tragedy soon

3:28

struck. Clarissa and Joseph had

3:30

a third child in the summer of eighteen

3:32

forty six, but Clarissa died in childbirth.

3:35

The daughter that she had delivered was also

3:37

named Clarissa, just to make things a little bit

3:40

confusing, but little

3:42

Clarissa's life was pretty short. According

3:44

to some accounts, all three of Joseph's

3:46

children died in an epidemic,

3:49

and if that was the case, it seems like

3:51

the most likely culprit would have been cholera,

3:53

which hit Illinois quite hard in the late

3:55

eighteen forties. Joseph

3:57

remarried to a woman named Lucinda

4:00

Worn on October sixth, eighteen fifty.

4:03

Lucenda was born in eighteen twenty six

4:05

in Mount Pleasant, New Jersey. Her

4:07

family had moved to Illinois in eighteen thirty

4:10

seven and opened a tavern called the Halfway

4:12

House, which also served as the

4:14

post office of Elburn, Illinois,

4:16

where the family lived. That was with

4:18

Lucenda's father, Henry Warren, as

4:21

postmaster. In December

4:23

of eighteen fifty one, a little Over

4:25

a year after the wedding, Joseph and Lucenda

4:28

welcomed a daughter named Elva

4:30

Francis. At this point,

4:32

there was a Decab county in Illinois,

4:34

but no incorporated city, although

4:37

there were certainly hopes on the parts

4:39

of the people that lived there that the area would grow

4:41

and eventually have a more centralized

4:44

presence. Joseph

4:46

became very involved in his community,

4:48

and in eighteen fifty two he ran for county

4:50

sheriff and won. He

4:52

also helped the railroad out when the Galena

4:55

and Chicago Union Line wanted to build.

4:58

Joseph, seeing this as an op opportunity

5:00

to continue to grow the area, let

5:02

them cross the railroad through his property

5:05

at its southern end, and he and Lucinda

5:07

allegedly greeted the first train crew that

5:09

came through once the line was complete, and

5:12

even served them breakfast in their home. The

5:15

city of Dacab incorporated as

5:17

a village four years after Glidden's

5:19

election to the office of sheriff, and it was

5:21

another two decades after that before

5:24

it became a city, But through

5:26

it all Glidden was a leader within the

5:28

community. After serving as sheriff,

5:30

he was on the county's Board of Supervisors,

5:33

and in eighteen sixty one Glidden built a

5:35

new home, upgrading from the log cabin

5:37

he and Lucinda and Elva had lived in

5:39

for years. This is a tiny

5:42

detail, but we're noting it because it's something

5:44

we're going to come back to. In

5:46

eighteen seventy three, it's reported

5:49

that Glidden saw a type of barbed

5:51

fencing at the DCAB County Fair.

5:54

The version on display had been created

5:56

by another farmer, Henry Rose,

5:58

and it featured metal bar herbs that were embedded

6:01

in flat wooden blocks. The

6:03

details on this are different per

6:05

different people's accounts, but basically some

6:08

of them say it's they're square blocks about

6:10

two inches square, with a sharp

6:12

end sticking out of each wooden block. Some of them

6:14

describe them more as longer slats,

6:17

but either way, these small pieces of wood

6:19

were then attached to wire that was strung between

6:21

posts, and this was all designed

6:23

to keep cattle from leaning up against the

6:25

fence and toppling it. It

6:27

was a good idea, but Glidden thought

6:30

he could improve upon it, and just

6:32

as a brief aside. According to

6:34

a Tulsa World right up from nineteen fifty

6:36

two, so long after this all happened. Glidden

6:39

was partially inspired by having heard

6:41

about cactus fences in the Southwest,

6:44

and he wanted to incorporate that idea

6:46

into what he might do with a fence like this.

6:49

It's completely unclear where that detail

6:51

came from or if it has any kernel of truth

6:54

to it, but I just thought it was interesting.

6:58

The main issues that Glidden saw

7:01

with the wooden barbed fence

7:03

were that it was costly, timber

7:06

was not exactly abundant in the Plaine

7:08

States, and also it wasn't

7:10

all that sturdy. So he started

7:13

thinking about ways to develop something that

7:15

had the same benefit of keeping

7:17

the cattle from it, but addressed those

7:19

two weaknesses in the design. One

7:22

of the first things he recognized was that the

7:24

barbs which stuck out of the wood

7:26

in roses design, would be more

7:28

effective if they were attached directly

7:31

to the wire. According

7:33

to Lare, which is based on an account

7:36

that Glidden's wife, Lucinda, gave many years

7:38

later, she started noticing

7:41

that her hairpins were going missing, and

7:43

then she initially thought it was their daughter

7:46

stealing them, but then one day she saw her

7:48

husband just casually pull one from

7:50

his pocket. When she asked what he was doing.

7:52

He told her that he was using them to

7:55

figure out his fence design, so

7:57

he started working with fencewayer once he

7:59

had this design idea, which was to twist

8:02

small, sharpened lengths of wire

8:04

into coils that could then be strung

8:06

on two longer lengths of wire to create

8:09

fencing. Forming those

8:11

coils was a challenge though. If you've ever

8:13

tried to coil a piece of thick

8:15

wire in a uniform

8:17

way, even with players, you know

8:19

that could be tricky. He

8:22

ended up getting a blacksmith friend named Phineas

8:25

Vaughn involved, and

8:27

Phineas helped figure out

8:29

an easy way to produce these small

8:31

coiled barbs in quantity,

8:35

and so Glinton applied for

8:37

and received a patent for his wire on

8:39

May twelfth of eighteen seventy four. But

8:43

though his coiled barbs were effective,

8:46

another problem presented itself.

8:48

The coils could be strung onto longer

8:51

lengths of wire pretty easily, but

8:53

then keeping them in place that

8:55

was another matter. Imagining just

8:58

all the little barbs widing

9:00

and collecting in one point on the wire.

9:03

But at some point Glidden hit upon

9:05

the idea of twisting the wire

9:08

so there would be the wire that had the barbs

9:10

strung onto it twisted

9:12

along with the other wire, and those

9:15

two wires together would keep the barbs

9:17

in place. He started working on another

9:20

patent application. His next patent

9:22

was issued on November twenty fourth, eighteen seventy

9:25

four. It was patent number one

9:27

five seven one two four for

9:29

the type of barbed wire that Gliden

9:31

called the winner. The following

9:34

month, he and Phineas Vaughan received

9:36

a patent for the machinery they had

9:38

developed to produce this wire. In

9:41

the first gear that Glidden held this patent,

9:43

he produced thirty two miles or fifty

9:46

one kilometers worth of barbed wire. His

9:49

initial method of manufacturer used

9:51

a horse to drive the twisting machinery.

9:54

That might sound odd to today's

9:57

ear, but that's like That's also how rope was

9:59

produced, not

10:02

a brand new idea. He eventually

10:04

entered into a partnership with hardware

10:06

store owner Isaac L. Elwood

10:08

to create manufacturing facilities. Elwood

10:11

had been working on his own barbed wire

10:13

design and even filed a patent for it,

10:15

but once they were business partners, he

10:18

backed Glidden's coil and double wire

10:20

design. Coming up, we'll

10:22

talk about some of the ways that Joseph Glidden

10:24

marketed his invention. But first

10:26

we'll pause for a quick sponsor break. Joseph

10:38

Glidden had very wisely

10:41

recognized that he couldn't sell his wire

10:43

fencing across the country himself, so

10:45

he created a sales network basically

10:48

where he had been. He showed it

10:50

to his neighbors and they got the idea that

10:53

it was a good thing, so they started buying

10:55

it, and he thought he could replicate that in other communities,

10:58

So he hired men from within the communities

11:00

he wanted to sell to, and he had

11:03

them act as his agents in that area,

11:05

with each agent kind of having their own territory.

11:09

This localized distribution gained

11:11

the interest and trust of a lot of farmers,

11:13

and sales really started to take off.

11:16

By eighteen eighty, for example, the facility

11:18

was making two hundred and sixty three thousand

11:21

miles it's about four hundred twenty three

11:23

thousand kilometers of Glidden wire every

11:25

year. Another way

11:27

that Glidden expanded his reach was

11:29

to build an example of how well

11:32

the fencing worked. In eighteen

11:34

eighty one, he invested in land in Grayson

11:36

County, Texas, in a partnership with Henry

11:39

B. Sanborn, who already owned

11:41

two thousand acres there, and

11:43

the reason for this was that while Texas had

11:45

a large number of ranchers, it had

11:47

been slow to embrace barbed wire.

11:50

For one, people saw it as a Yankee

11:52

invention and therefore suspicious.

11:56

For another, Texas was mostly run

11:58

with an open range cattle driving

12:00

method, so all the cattle

12:02

would be out in the range and then driven back to another

12:05

place at the right time of the year. There were

12:07

also concerns that the barbed

12:09

wire would kill more cattle

12:11

than it could contain, so

12:14

the Glidden and Sanborn project was meant

12:16

to give ranchers an example of

12:18

just how beneficial barbed fencing could

12:20

be. Glidden and Sanborn

12:23

had the property fenced off with barbed

12:25

wire and they named it Frying Pan Ranch.

12:28

Sanborn incidentally was married to

12:30

Glidden's niece. Glidden

12:32

and Sanborn had fifteen thousand head

12:34

of cattle brought to the ranch to show how large

12:36

an operation they were able to manage thanks

12:39

to the use of Glidden's fencing, and

12:41

it really worked. The Texas market

12:44

caught on and boomed as ranchers sought

12:46

to duplicate the success of the frying

12:48

pan ranch setup. Glidden

12:51

and his competitors probably did

12:53

not anticipate the impact

12:56

of barbed wire on the shaping

12:58

of the United States. This was

13:00

at a time when the Homestead Act

13:02

was enabling people to lay claim to

13:04

land in the North American West.

13:07

That land, of course, was already home to

13:10

indigenous people. We have previous episodes

13:12

where we've talked about this Act and how it came

13:14

to be. Barbed Wire

13:17

gave homesteaders a way to

13:19

clearly delineate their claimed

13:21

land, but it also obviously

13:24

disrupted traveling and the

13:26

grazing practices of livestock.

13:28

This so this is affecting both indigenous

13:31

people and ranchers who were accustomed

13:33

to letting livestock just move through the land

13:35

unhindered. This

13:38

also gave homesteaders the

13:40

confidence to claim that indigenous

13:42

tribes were not developing

13:44

the land and thus had no right

13:47

to it. So we would have like

13:49

a rancher who had fenced

13:51

off their land saying that the Native

13:53

American people nearby had not developed

13:55

their land. This obviously was

13:57

a faulty notion, rooted in the

14:00

idea that white homesteaders knew

14:02

better about the land than the peoples who

14:04

had lived there for generations. The

14:07

fencing also impacted wildlife,

14:09

which could easily get caught in it and

14:11

be injured or die. He

14:14

already mentioned disrupting animal

14:16

migrations. Yeah,

14:18

there's a lot all

14:21

of those issues, though didn't really directly

14:23

impact Glidden. But he had

14:26

his own legal battles to fight regarding

14:28

his patent. He had a challenge

14:30

to his claim that he had invented barbed

14:32

wire. To be clear, he was

14:34

certainly not the first person to think of it.

14:36

That's obvious by the fact that he was inspired

14:39

by Henry Rose's barbed fence idea

14:41

at the Decab County Fair, and

14:44

he wasn't even the first person to patent it.

14:46

Rose had a patent, so did a

14:48

man named Michael Kelly of New York, who had

14:50

an eighteen sixty eight patent for a

14:52

fence that included a flatwire almost

14:55

like a ribbon, that had barbs inserted

14:57

through holes in it. He called that thorny

14:59

fence, and there had also been a lot

15:01

of other patent applications filed for fences

15:04

with some sort of thorn or barbed attached,

15:06

literally dozens of them. But

15:08

the main challenger to Gliddon's claim

15:11

of invention was a man who had

15:13

been to the very same county fair,

15:15

that was Jacob Hash.

15:17

In fact, according to Isaac Elwood,

15:20

these men, along with himself, had

15:22

looked at Rosa's barbed fence together.

15:25

He recalled many years later, quote,

15:27

in eighteen seventy three, we had a little county

15:30

fair down here where the normal school

15:32

now stands, and a man by the

15:35

name of Rose, that lived in Clinton, exhibited

15:37

at that fair a strip of wood about

15:40

an inch square and about sixteen feet

15:42

long, and drove into

15:44

his wood some sharp brads, leaving

15:46

the points sticking out, for the purpose of

15:48

hanging it on a smooth wire, which

15:51

was the principal fencing material at

15:53

that time. This strip of

15:55

wood, so armed to hang on the wire

15:57

was to stop the cattle from crawling through

16:00

t Mister Glidden, mister Hash,

16:02

and myself were at that fair, and all

16:04

three of us stood looking at this invention

16:06

of mister Rose's, and I think

16:09

that each one of us at that hour conceived

16:12

the idea that barbes could be placed

16:14

on the wire in some way instead

16:16

of being driven into the strip of wood.

16:19

Mister Glidden, mister Hash, and myself

16:22

each one returned to our places of business

16:24

with an idea of constructing

16:27

a barb wire. Mister

16:29

Hash made what is known as the Hash

16:32

barb and mister Glidden what is

16:34

known as the Glidden barb. So

16:37

Glidden and Hash obviously knew each

16:39

other. They lived in a very tiny town

16:41

with fewer than sixteen hundred people, and

16:44

Hash, who was a carpenter, had actually

16:46

been the contractor who built Glidden's

16:48

house in eighteen sixty one that we mentioned

16:50

earlier. They clearly had a relationship.

16:53

Jacob Hash was born in Germany in eighteen

16:55

twenty six, and then his family had moved

16:58

to the US and settled in Ohio when

17:00

Jacob was still a boy. He

17:02

moved to Illinois at the age of nineteen and

17:04

then to Decab, Illinois, specifically

17:06

several years later in eighteen fifty three.

17:09

Hayesh had learned carpentry from his father

17:11

growing up, and he had set up his own carpentry

17:14

business into Cab. The timelines

17:17

of Glidden's and Hash's work on barbed

17:19

wire fencing were very parallel. Hash,

17:22

according to his own account, had come up

17:25

with his version in September of eighteen

17:27

seventy three, but didn't file for a

17:29

patent on it until December, about

17:31

a month after Glidden received his patent.

17:34

Hash's barb is different from

17:36

Glidden's, so where Glidden opted

17:39

for a coiled barb, Hash's

17:41

was shaped into an exaggerated sort

17:43

of sharp s curve. Hash

17:46

also had two twisted wires to keep

17:48

his in place, and those wires nested

17:50

into the interior curves

17:53

on the s on either side to keep

17:55

the barbs in place. Now,

17:57

there is some inconsistency in accounts

18:00

about how things played out from here in

18:02

terms of how these two men got along.

18:04

For example, there's an account by Hayes where

18:06

he's like, we got along fine until eighteen seventy

18:09

six. But on June twenty

18:11

fifth of eighteen seventy four, Hash,

18:13

after receiving his patent, filed

18:16

an article of infringement to stop

18:18

Glidden's patent rights, and this catalyzed

18:21

a legal tangle that played out over the

18:23

course of eighteen years.

18:26

Joseph Glidden managed to largely

18:28

stay out of the legal fray because by

18:30

the spring of eighteen seventy six, so just

18:33

a couple of years from the time he applied for his very

18:35

first patent, he decided

18:37

he didn't want to be part of the manufacture of

18:39

his barbed wire anymore. He

18:42

sold his half of the Glidden Ellwood

18:44

Wire Company to Washburn

18:46

Mowen Company for sixty thousand dollars,

18:49

but he kept royalty rights for the wire, and

18:51

that kept money flowing in. And

18:53

you may recall that just a little while ago we talked

18:56

about him starting his ranch in Texas

18:58

in the early eighteen eighties, which we have

19:00

been after this, and that's because even though

19:02

he wasn't an owner in the production company

19:04

anymore, he still had a very keen

19:06

interest in the success of his invention because

19:09

those royalties were making him a lot

19:11

of money. As the legal battle

19:13

was heating up, a short book appeared

19:16

titled The Utility, Efficiency

19:19

and Economy of barb Fence.

19:21

A Book for the Farmer, the gardener, and

19:23

the country Gentleman. This

19:26

seventy four page booklet, which came

19:28

out in eighteen seventy six, was published

19:30

by Washburn and Mowen Manufacturing

19:32

Company and Illwood

19:35

and Company. This booklet

19:37

is clearly intended to establish the narrative

19:39

that Washburn, Mowen and Elwood are

19:41

the rightful producers of barbed

19:44

wire. It opens by noting

19:46

that Washburn and Mowen Company had been

19:48

selling plane wire fences for

19:50

more than twenty five years, but that

19:52

for all their benefits, cost

19:54

effectiveness and fire resistance,

19:57

there were flaws and it thus the need

19:59

for barb wire. The

20:01

booklet calls out the invention work

20:03

of William D. Hunt, Michael Kelly,

20:06

and Joseph Glindon, and then

20:08

notes that their business now owns

20:10

all of those patents. There

20:13

are even illustrations, one of which shows

20:15

several cattle outside of an enclosed

20:17

crop, with the caption quote, barb

20:20

fence protects the most tempting crops

20:22

from the most unruly cattle.

20:25

I love the phrase unruly cattle. Yeah,

20:28

it's a little far side. It makes me

20:30

conjure images of like rebellious cows.

20:33

This book is also part sales device.

20:36

It outlines the various costs and the

20:38

rates and usage cases for barbed wire,

20:41

but there is also an entire section

20:43

called patent claims, and it opens

20:45

this way quote, we briefly enumerate

20:48

the features of barb fence and barbs The

20:50

two companies named regard themselves

20:52

as exclusively entitled

20:54

to manufacture, and then this

20:56

section lists all of the various patents

20:59

they hold with the specific language

21:01

of the patents that sets them apart from previous

21:03

inventions, and then the rest

21:05

of the book is filled with testimonials from happy

21:08

customers. So this entire thing

21:10

is very obviously a PR publication.

21:13

In a moment, we'll talk more about

21:15

the legal conflict over the patent rights

21:17

to produce barbed wire, but first

21:20

we'll hear from the sponsors that keep stuff

21:22

you missed in history class going. Unsurprisingly,

21:35

given the booklet that we mentioned just before

21:37

the break, the Washburn

21:39

and Mowen Company and Isaac Elwood

21:42

went all in on the legal battle

21:44

over patent rights. In the fall

21:46

of eighteen seventy six. They sued Hash,

21:48

and their efforts were sweeping, invoking

21:51

multiple other patents that they had acquired

21:53

cutting deals that gave their original patent

21:56

holders a share of sales. According

21:59

to a write up in the chaoz Ayago Tribune, the

22:01

bill filed by Glidden's colleagues was

22:03

to quote restrain him from

22:05

him being Hash was to quote

22:08

restrain him from infringing a patent

22:10

for new and useful improvement in weier fences,

22:13

issued July twenty third, eighteen sixty

22:15

seven to William Hunt reissued

22:17

March seventh, eighteen seventy six, and subsequently

22:20

assigned to complainants. The

22:22

same company filed a similar bill against

22:24

the same defendant to restrain him from

22:26

infringing a patent for an improvement in barbed

22:29

fence wire's issued February eighth,

22:31

eighteen sixty eight to Michael Kelly, reissued

22:34

February eighteen seventy six and

22:36

assigned to the complainants. The

22:39

legal battle between the Hash design

22:41

and the Glidden design, which was very complicated

22:44

by the sales of patent rights and company

22:46

interests over the years, wasn't settled

22:48

until eighteen ninety two, when the

22:50

US Supreme Court finally settled the

22:53

matter in favor of the Glidden patents.

22:56

In the end, the biggest element

22:58

that landed the decision in five favor of the

23:00

Glidden patent was his thoroughness

23:03

in establishing a method of operation.

23:06

The court noted that no one could

23:08

claim that Glidden hadn't made quote

23:11

a most valuable contribution to the

23:13

art of wire fencing in the introduction

23:16

of the coiled barb, in combination

23:18

with the twisted wire by which

23:20

it is clamped and held in position. By

23:23

this device, the barb was prevented from

23:25

turning or moving laterally, and was

23:27

held rigidly in place. The

23:30

judgment further noted quote, under such

23:32

circumstances, courts have not been reluctant

23:35

to sustain a patent to the man who

23:37

has taken the final step which has

23:39

turned a failure into a success.

23:42

In the law of patents, it is the last

23:44

step that wins. Yeah.

23:47

They really talk about how his language

23:49

includes like exactly how to make the wire,

23:51

whereas Haiti's and some

23:53

of the others are like, and then you strike it with a

23:55

hammer, and they're like, that's too nebulous, whereas

23:59

his is very, very dear in

24:01

the middle of the many suits

24:03

and legal steps along the way. Hash

24:05

also wrote a pamphlet telling his side of

24:07

the story in eighteen eighty, which

24:09

was titled A Reminiscent Chapter

24:12

from the Unwritten History of Barbed Wire

24:14

Prior to and immediately following the

24:16

celebrated decision of Judge Blodgett

24:19

December fifteenth, eighteen eighty. In

24:21

this book, Hash makes clear that he feels

24:24

that his work on barbed wire was

24:26

much more serious than Gliddon's writing

24:28

quote, while Uncle Joe was working

24:31

in his pasture lot winding his

24:33

experimental wire on an empty nail keg

24:35

twisting it as best he could.

24:38

I had transformed the second story of

24:40

my carpenter shop, a building about

24:42

forty feet long, into a barbed

24:44

wire factory. Having invented

24:46

a twisting device as well as a spool

24:49

same as used today, and small

24:51

hand machines to form a straight piece of wire

24:54

into the form of a letter S, I

24:56

commenced operations. Hash

24:59

also claimed and his pamphlet that

25:01

Charles F. Washburn had approached him

25:03

first with an offer to buy the patent

25:06

for the S curve barbed wire, but

25:08

the two men could not agree on a price.

25:11

According to hash Quote, the final outcome

25:13

of this visit was a willingness to

25:16

buy. The question of patents

25:18

was fully entered into, with his summing

25:20

up that they were a bugbear to many.

25:23

It was up to me to make an offer, which I

25:25

did. The price was two hundred thousand

25:27

dollars. It would have been cheap

25:30

at that Washburn

25:32

had offered him only twenty five thousand dollars.

25:35

Not long after, Washburn struck

25:37

the sixty thousand dollars deal with Glidden.

25:40

Hayesh releat is the way that things next

25:43

shifted in his dealings with Washburn.

25:45

Quote, but what of mister Washburn,

25:48

Well, he was heard from later on when

25:51

notice was served on poor Lone

25:53

Jacob by the United States Marshal to

25:55

show cause for peaceably pursuing

25:58

a legitimate business under

26:00

protection of patents granted by the United

26:02

States government. I had yet

26:04

to learn that patents which had not been

26:07

adjudicated in the courts were oftentimes

26:09

a broken read upon which to lean.

26:12

Allow me to say just here that among

26:14

the first patents granted me was one

26:16

showing iron posts with a section

26:18

of woven wire stretched between them,

26:21

identically the same fence now

26:23

called the elwood woven wire

26:27

queer. How some things come about,

26:29

isn't it? Yeah? That whole book

26:31

is very much like I did all these things.

26:33

They just wrote it up more. It's

26:38

I can't understand its frustration. Haysh

26:41

clearly sees his pamphlet as

26:43

the same sort of document as the booklet

26:45

that was produced by Washburn and Mowen just a

26:47

few years earlier. The end

26:49

of it contains a section headed as summary,

26:52

and in it he lays out his case to

26:54

claim the invention of barbed wire. Quote.

26:56

The s barb was my invention and

26:59

the first precal and commercially successful

27:01

barbwire. Introduced. One

27:04

of my early patents shows the first iron

27:06

post for field fence with a section

27:08

of woven wear. I had an

27:10

operation the first twisting and spooling

27:13

device I sent out to the trade

27:15

the first wooden spool on which barbwire

27:17

is wound. No change since I

27:20

secured the first dipping paint for barbedwire.

27:23

I introduced the first automatic barbwire

27:26

machinery. The principles

27:28

involved in my hand machines for twisting,

27:30

spooling, and putting on the barbs were

27:32

the same as now used in all automatic

27:35

barb wire machinery. I

27:37

introduced a new era in the methods of

27:39

advertising which are in vogue today.

27:42

Have I done my share? It

27:45

seems entirely likely

27:47

that the legal battles contributed to

27:49

Gliddon's desire to sell his steak

27:52

in the company in eighteen seventy six,

27:54

but he was also busy with other projects

27:57

that may have factored into the decisions.

28:00

A hotel that same year, the Glidden

28:02

House Hotel on Dacab's Second

28:04

Street, where it crossed Lincoln Highway.

28:07

In February of eighteen seventy seven,

28:09

Joseph and Lucinda's daughter Elva,

28:11

got married to William Henry Bush

28:13

Junior. Glidden gave the newlyweds

28:16

his eight hundred acre farm property,

28:18

and he and Lucinda moved into town to

28:20

live at the hotel. The

28:23

Bushes didn't live on the farm,

28:25

though William had a business

28:27

in Chicago and they lived there. Glidden

28:30

was living in town and also set his sights

28:32

on being a newsman. In the summer

28:35

of eighteen seventy nine, he started publishing

28:37

the Dacab Chronicle. He also established

28:39

a bank in town in the early eighteen

28:42

eighties. All of these

28:44

shifts, with the exception of the bank, happened

28:46

before the frying Pan Ranch

28:49

project, and even once he was

28:51

invested in the ranch, he still

28:53

had never been there. He didn't visit

28:55

the ranch until eighteen eighty four. Part

28:58

of the land of the ranch became

29:00

the seat of Amerlo, Texas,

29:03

and Joseph visited in eighteen eighty seven to

29:05

be part of its establishment. He eventually

29:07

dissolved his partnership with Sanborn and

29:10

gave his son in law the Texas property

29:12

as well. So here

29:14

is an interesting twist in the Glidden and

29:16

Hash relationship in the mid

29:18

eighteen nineties. They came together in

29:20

the interest of education. There

29:23

was this big effort in the eighteen nineties to

29:25

establish a normal school, meaning a teacher

29:27

training school into Cab, Illinois,

29:30

and both Glidden and Hash were instrumental

29:32

in making it happen financially. Glidden

29:35

donated sixty four acres to the facility,

29:38

and at the suggestion of Hash, Glidden

29:41

was the one to break ground on it. And I love

29:43

this little detail. He used a

29:45

pencil to break ground as a symbol

29:47

of the importance of knowledge and education. And

29:50

it seems that the two men, who both became very

29:52

wealthy, successful leaders in the community,

29:55

were not holding grudges from those long legal

29:57

battles. The normal school that

30:00

they both helped pay for into Cab

30:02

eventually became Northern Illinois

30:04

University. Joseph Glidden

30:06

died on October ninth, nineteen oh

30:08

six, and was buried in Fairview Cemetery,

30:11

into Cab. He was ninety

30:13

three and he'd built a business empire

30:16

in his life. He had lost his

30:18

wife Lucenda in eighteen ninety five

30:20

and his daughter Elva earlier in nineteen

30:22

oh six. In his will, he

30:25

left twenty two thousand dollars to the city

30:27

of dacab to build a free hospital. He

30:29

left an additional five thousand dollars for

30:32

funding two free hospital wards,

30:34

which were the Lucenda Warned Glidden

30:37

Room and the Elva Glidden Bush

30:39

Room. Hash outlived

30:41

his rival and collaborator by a considerable

30:44

number of years. He died in early

30:46

nineteen twenty six, just shy of his one

30:48

hundredth birthday. He left

30:50

or reported one hundred fifty thousand dollars

30:53

earmarked for a public library. That

30:55

library was built and still exists today as

30:58

the Hash Memorial Library. These

31:01

twenty two thousand dollars for a hospital

31:03

and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a library

31:05

are sounds so quaint, that's

31:07

incredibly quaint,

31:08

So okay.

31:14

In early nineteen oh six,

31:16

a write up about barbed wire in

31:18

the Belvidere Daily Republican details

31:20

the story of Glyndon, Elwood and Hash

31:23

and paints a picture of the three men that's pretty

31:25

frank about their conflicts, but also manages

31:28

to honor all of them. That

31:30

rite up concludes with the following paragraph

31:33

quote the three patriarchs Joseph,

31:35

Jacob and Isaac are all living

31:37

into cab at peace with one another,

31:39

and all equally beloved by the townspeople

31:42

who know that it was the three who made the

31:44

town famous. When Joseph, Jacob,

31:47

and Isaac get together at a birthday

31:49

celebration or other function, they

31:51

pitch bouquets at each other around

31:53

the banquet board, while Rose, who

31:56

put the first idea in their heads, is

31:58

gone and is for God. I

32:01

love that. In the end, they were all like, listen,

32:03

we're all wealthy and successful. Can

32:06

we just hang and be buddies, Like we're just

32:08

old dudes who have shaped this town.

32:11

And they were like, yeah, let's see that. Yeah,

32:14

which to me is interesting because we have talked

32:16

so many times on the show about patent

32:19

rivalries, right how there's

32:22

obviously so much indignation

32:25

and hurt feelings in there that most people

32:27

never get over that hump. And

32:30

they were all just like, I don't know, I got rich anyway,

32:32

It's fine, it's fine, it's

32:35

a delight. I have really

32:37

really cute email.

32:40

And I mean okay in a very

32:43

flattering way and not a pejorative way. Sometimes

32:45

cute kids. He's like, oh that's cute. This is not that This

32:48

is legitimately the cutest email. The

32:51

subject line is you want Corvid photos

32:55

and our listener

32:57

did not sign their name, so

33:00

in their email they're just listed as

33:02

see Joy and

33:04

I don't know how they prefer

33:07

to be addressed, but they

33:09

write I love Corvid so much. I have two

33:11

Corvid tattoos, one a pair

33:13

of magpies, one that was made from a photo

33:15

I took of crows circling above an ancient

33:18

tea house in Narwa, Japan. The

33:20

most unusual corvids I've ever seen are

33:23

alpine chuffs, which live in high

33:25

mountains in Europe, Asia, and Africa and

33:27

are the world's highest nesting birds. A

33:30

few months after learning of their existence, I

33:32

was on vacation in Zermat, Switzerland,

33:34

trying to decide whether it would be worth it to

33:36

try to buy a very expensive ticket about

33:39

seventy dollars US if I remember correctly,

33:41

to take the Gorner Grat Railway, an old

33:44

cog railway that is the second highest railway

33:46

in Europe. While looking up pictures of

33:48

the top of Corner Grot to decide if the view would

33:50

be worth it, I saw an alpine chuff

33:52

in one of the photos and made up my mind

33:55

that the chance of seeing a species of Corvid

33:57

I had never seen before was worth the

33:59

price. I saw several They

34:01

congregate at the popular tourist site to scavenge

34:03

food scraps, and are so used to humans

34:06

that I was able to get some very close up photos.

34:09

Alpine chuffs have black feathers with

34:11

a green and purple sheen, bright yellow

34:13

beaks, bright red legs, and a

34:15

bubbly, high pitched call. And

34:18

then our listener attaches

34:21

photos which are gorgeous,

34:24

and even an audio that

34:26

they took of their call, which

34:28

is quite pretty. This is so

34:30

lovely. I feel almost guilty

34:33

that I have conjured all

34:35

of the corvid people to send

34:37

me things. I'm happy as

34:39

a clam that you're doing it, never

34:43

a directive, but always happy to receive

34:46

these things so beautiful.

34:48

And now I'm like, dang it do I

34:50

got to plan this trip because I would like to see

34:52

those birds. We'll see what happens.

34:55

But I love a Corvid tattoo.

34:58

We'll see if those ever happen for me. If

35:01

you have any bird, cat,

35:03

dog, snake, spider,

35:06

maybe just for me. I don't know how Tracy feels. I'm spiders.

35:09

I love spiders or or

35:13

other or history things you want to send

35:15

us, or just something you want to talk about. You can do that

35:18

at History Podcast at iHeartRadio

35:20

dot com. You can also subscribe to

35:22

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