That First Segment of Barbed Wire

Joseph Glidden worked on the first segment of barbed wire at his farm amid the broad cultivated fields out past the woods west of DeKalb. We know it as the Glidden Homestead. He’d had an insight about the problem of constructing a suitable fence wire. Bent over a segment of wire, he carefully, evenly spaced […]

Glidden’s Earliest Barbed Wire Document

The first and earliest document of importance relating to Glidden’s barbed wire patent #157,124 was written more than 140 years ago. The letter, announcing the “matter of application for patent for Improvement in ‘Wire Fences,’” is dated October 24, 1873. It is written by Chicago patent attorney George L. Chapin who will go on to […]

glidden homestead

Month: July 2016

That First Segment of Barbed Wire

Glidden’s Earliest Barbed Wire Document