Few inventions that were designed in the 1870s that have not changed since they were patented, and they are still widely used in the 21st century. Barbed wire is an innovation that fits this category, ...

__1867: __Lucien B. Smith patents barbed wire, an artificial "thorn hedge." It's an idea whose time clearly has come, but not quite in this form. Smith's design called for spools of four short, sharp ...

In the mid 1800s, not many (non-native) Americans had ever been west of the Mississippi. When Frederick Law Olmstead visited the west in the 1850s, he remarked that the plains looked like a sea of ...

Behold the humble barbed-wire fence, the five-strand sentinel of Texas woods and plains. Untold thousands of miles of barbed-wire fence divide the state, so ubiquitous outside the city centers that ...

Roman Mars’ podcast 99% Invisible covers design questions large and small, from his fascination with rebar to the history of slot machines to the great Los Angeles Red Car conspiracy. Here at The Eye, ...

One day as I was driving from my home near Kraemer Lake, I noticed a small herd of cattle in a pasture fenced with barbed wire. It brought back memories. Wire had been a much-used commodity on our ...