Joseph F. Glidden
Joseph F. Glidden was a farmer and the inventor of barbed wire, a product that forever altered the development of the American West.
Glidden was born in Clarendon, New York in 1813. In 1843, he moved to Illinois with his wife Clarissa Foster. She and her two sons died after the move, and Glidden married Luvinda Warne in 1851.
He invented barbed wire by using a coffee mill to create barbs. Glidden placed the barbs along a wire and then twisted another wire around it to keep the barbs in place. He received the patent for barbed wire in 1874 and was quickly embroiled in a legal battle over whether he actually invented it. He eventually won and created the Barb Fence Company in DeKalb, Illinois. His invention made him extremely rich. By the time of his death in 1906, he was one of the richest men in America
