Although the list includes only two patents by Glidden and Ellwood, by 1876 the I.L. Ellwood and Washburn & Moen Co. also owned the Hunt, Smith, and Kelly patents as well.
Probably half of the 530 patents issued for barb wire designs never resulted in commercially produced products but serve mostly as interesting trivia in the story of barbed wire.
Austin's "armored fence"
As a result of numerous patent disputes, many instigated by Jacob Haish, various "protective fencing" devices and related experiments came to light. Among the hundreds of claims of "I thought of it first" was one claim that was never decisively proved or disproved. Although no patent was ever issued it is of interest if for no other reason than it occurred here in Austin, Texas.
John Grenniger lived in Austin in 1857. A Swiss iron-worker, Grenniger had a small orchard that he wished to fervantly defend against stray cattle. To this end atop his standard board fence he constructed a row of jagged metal strips. By some accounts he included bits of broken glass as well. Any stray cattle attempting to breach Grenniger's "armored fence" would be pricked, sliced, cut, and otherwise deterred from the fruit trees.
The cruel nature of the barricade did little to endear Grenniger to his neighbors. Whether related to his unneighborly activities or not, Grenniger was supposedly murdered in 1862.
Grenniger applied for no patent and no proof of the existence of the fence existed. In a later trial to determine priority of inventions and to prove its existence prior to 1873, a replica was reconstructed and photographed. Although Grenniger's fence was not a barbed wire fence it is one of the earliest examples of protective "armored fence" using spikes - an area of experimentation that did eventually lead others to the invention of the barbed wire fence.
Don't fence me in | The first barbs | Barbed wire patents | Pitchin' fences | XIT Ranch | The fence-cutters' war | The big die-up | Barbed wire then and now
Table of Contents for entire article
| Barbed Wire Patents | |||
| Patent | Inventor | Location | Date |
| 63482 | Dabb | NJ | April 1867 |
| 66182 | Smith | OH | June 1867 |
| 67117 | Hunt | NY | July 1867 |
| 74379 | Kelly | NJ | Nov 1868 |
| 118135 | Judson | NY | Aug 1871 |
| 138763 | Rose | DeKalb | May 1873 |
| Wood and wire contraption that inspired Glidden, Haish, and Ellwood. | |||
| 146671 | Haish | DeKalb | Jan 1874 |
| 147634 | Haish | DeKalb | Feb 1874 |
| 147756 | Ellwood | DeKalb | Feb 1874 |
| The only patent Ellwood every applied for. | |||
| 152368 | Haish | DeKalb | June 1874 |
| 153965 | Kennedy | DeKalb | Aug 1874 |
| 157124 | Glidden | DeKalb | Nov 1874 |
| The Winner: This, or variations, was used on majority of commercial barb wire during 70s-80s. Modern styles are similar to this wire barb twisted onto a double-strand wire. Only one other design patented later came close to matching its lifetime sales. | |||
| 167240 | Haish | DeKalb | Aug 1875 |
| S barb, Haish's third type of wire and most important design. It came close to or matched sales for Glidden's The Winner during its first years of production. | |||