How Rural America Turned Barbed Wire Into Telephone Lines

https://texascooppower.com/ ^ | January 2022 | W.F. Strong

[V K Lee]

Historian J. Evetts Haley noted that the XIT Ranch was probably the largest fenced range in the world, and its barbed wire enclosed more than 3 million acres. The huge enclosure helped manage enormous cattle herds and deterred rustlers but also gave rise to the creative use of a new technology: the telephone.

Consider these reports from other parts of the West. In 1897, The Electrical Review reported that “on a ranch in California, telephone communication had been established between the various camps … by means of barbed wire fences.” Also in 1897, the New England Journal of Agriculture observed that two Kansas farmers, a mile apart, had attached phone instruments to a barbed wire fence that connected their farms and established easy communication.

Listen to Author W.F. Strong Read This Story...[snip]

[V K Lee]

Innovative Americans. We getter' done!

[Lurker]

How interesting.

Thanks.

L

[MercyFlush]

This would be illegal today because the government can’t tax the system or spy on it.

[Kevmo]

When I was trying to sell gigabit ethernet, Broadcom came up with a test of operability by sending the signals over 100 meters of barbed wire. The ‘barbed wire test’.

[TexasGator]

“When I was trying to sell gigabit ethernet, Broadcom came up with a test of operability by sending the signals over 100 meters of barbed wire. The ‘barbed wire test’.”

How is that ECat working out?

[Tennessee Nana]

Clever ...

[Kevmo]

How is your new career as a stalker working out for you? Frack off, troll.

[EvilCapitalist]

Wasn’t there an episode of Petticoat Junction about this subject?

[V K Lee]

Sorry, unable to answer for you. Seldom watched PJ. “Hee Haw” was the personal break of the day.

[V K Lee]

Unfortunately, you’re so correct in your statement.
If they are unable to make use of control, they either tax
or prevent. Surprising that the use of barbed wire was
never forbidden.

[PIF]

This would be illegal today because the government can’t tax the system or spy on it.
—

Not so - NSA used to tap landlines in the 1950s-80s by finding a side lobe off the wire and listening in - barbed wire same basic stuff as above-ground phone wires.

[V K Lee]

Yes, very. The US has produced many ingenious people, some
still unknown and anonymous.

[backwoods-engineer]

Illegal? Well, they better come to my farm and arrest me then. I have my own phone system. HARDENED phone system.

[Vendome]

per the 1934 telecommunications act....

[cymbeline]

“This would be illegal today because the government can’t tax the system “

Also it might injure the linemen and linewomen.

[texas booster]

On the XIT, given that the ranch covered more than 4,500 square miles, there was interest in creating a communication system that would be more efficient than sending out fast riders to distant camps. “In the early 1900s,” Haley wrote in his 1929 history of the XIT, “a great many telephones were placed upon the ranch.

Where possible, the top line of the fences was used as a telephone line, though the ‘service’ was atrocious. It did allow for quick communication concerning emergencies such as grassfires that required all cowboys immediately.” There was even talk among technology geeks of the era that cowboys could carry phones wherever they went and clip on to the fence to report problems.

Necessity is truly the mother of invention.

True analog way back in the day.

[GingisK]

They can indeed spy on something like that.

[texas booster]

I trust that someone used a pink princess phone on one of these farms.

[GingisK]

The history of the development of electrical/electronics/electro-mechanical machinery is fascinating. European involvement was critical as well.

The Periodic Table of the Elements comes from Russia.

[sauropod]

.