You may not think it, but the history of barbed wire is one of the most interesting that I have ever read about. Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio got a US patent in the in 1867, and was the first wire technology capable of restraining cattle. This made intensive animal husbandry practical on a much larger scale.
Barbed wire also emerged to have another quite useful feature: that of fortification in a military sense. Thus, the emergence of barbed wire was an integral part of explaining the kind of trench warfare in the First World War. Of course, this is not simply the straightforward notion that barbed wire "gets in the way" - which it does - but wire was not placed either solely used to impede or stop the passage of soldiers. The most common strategic use was to channel them into narrow passages in which small arms, particularly machine guns, and indirect fire could be used with greater effect as they attempted to pass. Thus you can generate the sort of result that saw the British Army lose 57,470 casualties inside four hours. Ain't barbed wire grand?
THIS barbed wire rather ineffectively sits atop my building at work. I am not sure what it is intended to deter, but I suspect it is not cattle.
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