Joseph Farwell Glidden (January 18, 1813 â October 9, 1906) was an American businessman and farmer. He was the inventor of the modern barbed wire. In 1898, he donated land for the Northern Illinois State Normal School in DeKalb, Illinois, which was renamed as Northern Illinois University in 1957.
Glidden began work on ways to make a useful barbed wire to fence cattle in 1873. He made his best design of barbed wire by using a coffee mill to create the barbs. Glidden placed the barbs along a wire and then twisted another wire around it to keep the barbs in place, in a design that he called âThe Winnerâ, being his best design. He received the patent for that barbed wire design on November 24, 1874, when he was 61 years old. He and local hardware dealer Isaac L. Ellwood began manufacturing and selling the barbed wire with his patent, as the Barb Fence Company in DeKalb, Illinois. In 1876, Glidden exited the manufacturing aspect, though retaining royalties, by selling his half of the manufacturing business to Washburn and Moen, who had a wire manufacturing plant in Worcester, Massachusetts and from whom Glidden and Ellwood had been purchasing steel wire. Ellwood stayed in DeKalb and renamed the company I. L. Ellwood & Company of DeKalb. That company evolved into American Steel and Wire, and eventually was bought by U. S. Steel Manufacturing Company.
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