1. Joseph Farwell Glidden was an American businessman and farmer.
18 Facts About Joseph Glidden
1. 2.
Joseph Glidden was the inventor of the modern barbed wire.
3.
Joseph Glidden was a teacher there for about 8 years, during which years he married Clarissa Foster in 1837.
4.
Joseph Glidden's wife died in 1846, in childbirth of their daughter in Ogle County, Illinois.
5.
Joseph Glidden married Lucinda Warne in 1851, with whom he had one daughter, Elva Frances.
6.
Joseph Glidden began work on ways to make a useful barbed wire to fence cattle in 1873.
7.
Joseph Glidden made his best design of barbed wire by using a coffee mill to create the barbs.
8.
Joseph Glidden placed the barbs along a wire and then twisted another wire around it to keep the barbs in place, in a design that he called "The Winner", being his best design.
9.
Joseph Glidden received the patent for that barbed wire design on November 24,1874, when he was 61 years old.
10.
In 1876, Joseph Glidden exited the manufacturing aspect, though retaining royalties, by selling his half of the manufacturing business to Washburn and Moen, who had a wire manufacturing plant in Worcester, Massachusetts and from whom Joseph Glidden and Ellwood had been purchasing steel wire.
11.
Joseph Glidden was embroiled in a legal battle initiated by fellow DeKalb resident Jacob Haish over whether the design for holding the barbs in place with an extra strand of wire was novel, an improved design.
12.
Joseph Glidden eventually won at the US Supreme Court in an 1892 case, his patent protection expired the same year.
13.
Joseph Glidden was one of the largest contributors to the erection of one of the churches.
14.
Joseph Glidden was vice-president of the DeKalb National Bank, director of the North Western Railroad, and owner of the DeKalb Rolling Mill.
15.
In 1898, Joseph Glidden deeded Frying Pan Ranch to his son-in-law William Henry Bush.
16.
Joseph Glidden married William Henry Bush in DeKalb on February 1,1877.
17.
In 1898, Glidden deeded his Frying Pan ranch in Texas to his son-in-law, W H Bush.
18.
The "barbed wire salesman" in Back to the Future Part III is either based on Joseph F Glidden or John Warne Gates who was a pioneer promoter of barbed wire.