When a new child visited our Sunday school, the teacher greeted him and asked his age. The little boy held up four fingers.
"Oh, you're four," said the teacher. "And when will you be 5?"
The child stared at her and after a few seconds replied, "When I hold up the other finger."
Barbed wireIn 1874, the first U.S. patent for barbed wire was issued to Joseph F. Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois (No. 157,124). Having filed his application on 27 Oct 1873, Glidden began manufacturing on 1 Nov 1873, in DeKalb. The barbs were cut from sheet metal and were inserted between two wires which were twisted considerably more than with today's common design. This product would transform the West. Before this innovation, settlers on the treeless plains had no easy way to fence livestock away from cropland, and ranchers had no way to prevent their herds from roaming far and wide. Glidden's barbed wire opened the plains to large-scale farming, and closed the open range, bringing the era of the cowboy and the round-up to an end.[Image: detail from patent application diagram] |
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