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In 1876 salesman Pete McManus with his partner John Warne (Bet-a-Million) Gates conducted a famous demonstration on Alamo Plaza in San Antonio in which a fence of Glidden's "Winner" wire restrained a herd of longhorn cattle.
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The HydraHyde leather that they’ve used went through a special and patent-pending tanning process. Though he sold the first barbed wire in the state, he failed to exploit the large potential market. The Wells Lamont Leather Fencer Work Gloves are your best bet if you want a pair that will provide you protection and comfort while you’re working hard with barbed wire. Henry Bradley Sanborn traveled to Texas in 1875 as representative of Glidden and Ellwood's Barbed Fence Company. Washburn and Moen, eventually absorbed by United States Steel Corporation, had acquired all major barbed wire patents, except that of Haish, by 1876, thus achieving a near-monopoly on this important product. Ellwood remained an active partner in the new organization as sole agent and distributor for the South and West. Ellwood, Glidden sold his interests, which included other barbed wire patents, to the Massachusetts wire manufacturer Washburn and Moen in May 1876. Another DeKalb inventor, Jacob Haish, who had applied for a patent on a similar "S barb" design earlier in 1874, undertook a protracted legal battle that failed to halt the progress of the Glidden design. The standard barb spacing is five inches however we recommend three inch barb spacing for areas where high animal traffic, predator risks, or security are concerns. Known as the "Winner," this was the most commercially successful of the hundreds of eventual barbed wire designs. Barbed wire consists of two wire strands twisted together with either two or four point barbs placed at predetermined distances. Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, was granted a patent for fencing material consisting of barbs wrapped around a single strand of wire and held in place by twisting that strand around another. Hedges of it were claimed to be "pig tight, horse high, and bull strong." Experiments with varieties of thorn hedges and smooth wire failed to solve the problems of plains ranchers and farmers, however, and so their features were combined into barbed wire fences. Bois d'arc is native to Texas and Arkansas, and export of its seed was an early enterprise in Texas. Texas substitutes for the stone and wood fences common in the East included ditches, mud fences, and thorny hedges, the most popular being those of Osage orange or bois d'arc.
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Patent Office to American inventors, beginning with Michael Kelly in November 1868 and ending with Joseph Glidden in November 1874. Nine patents for improvements to wire fencing were granted by the U.S.
#BARBED WIRE SERIES#
By the 1870s westward expansion of the agricultural frontier across the Great Plains had been halted by the lack of adequate fencing material to protect crops from cattle. Background Life in the American West was reshaped by a series of patents for a simple tool that helped ranchers tame the land: barbed wire.