大象传媒

In 1876 John Warne Gates described the new product he hoped to sell as 鈥渓ighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust鈥�. We simply call it barbed wire. The advertisements of the time touted it this fence as 鈥淭he Greatest Discovery Of The Age鈥�. That might seem hyperbolic, even making allowances for the fact that the advertisers didn鈥檛 know that Alexander Graham Bell was just about to be awarded a patent for the telephone. But 鈥� as Tim Harford explains 鈥� while modern minds naturally think of the telephone as transformative, barbed wire wreaked huge changes in America, and much more quickly.

Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon

(Image: Barbed wire and sun, Credit: Getty Images)