Joseph F. Glidden

Joseph Farwell Glidden (18 January 1813 to 9 October 1906) was an American businessman and farmer, born in Charlestown, New Hampshire, who worked as a teacher before moving to a farm near DeKalb, Illinois in 1843. He is the inventor of the modern barbed wire. In 1873 he began work on a useful barbed wire for fencing cattle and made his best design by using a coffee mill to create the barbs, placing them along a wire and twisting a second wire around it to hold them in place. He called the design The Winner and received his patent on 24 November 1874. With the hardware dealer Isaac L. Ellwood he began manufacturing it in DeKalb, and he won a long legal battle over the design at the United States Supreme Court in 1892. In 1874 he also donated land for the Northern Illinois State Normal School.