Barbed Wire
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In 1876 John Warne Gates described the new product he hoped to sell as \\u201clighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust\\u201d. We simply call it barbed wire. The advertisements of the time touted it this fence as \\u201cThe Greatest Discovery Of The Age\\u201d. That might seem hyperbolic, even making allowances for the fact that the advertisers didn\\u2019t know that Alexander Graham Bell was just about to be awarded a patent for the telephone. But \\u2013 as Tim Harford explains \\u2013 while modern minds naturally think of the telephone as transformative, barbed wire wreaked huge changes in America, and much more quickly.
Producer: Ben Crighton\\nEditors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Image: Barbed wire and sun, Credit: Getty Images)
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