1877 | Technology
Technology
Barbed-wire prices drop from 18¢/lb. to 8¢ as the Bessemer steelmaking process of 1856 is applied to barbed-wire production (see Gates, 1875). All barbed-wire patents were acquired last year by Washburn & Moen Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, and sales of barbed wire leap from last year's 840,000 pounds to 12.86 million pounds. A ton of barbed wire represents two miles of three-strand "devil's rope" and sales will climb to 26.7 million pounds next year, 50.3 million in 1879, 80.5 million in 1880, 120 million in 1881 (see 1898).
Civil War cannon maker Robert P. Parrott dies at Cold Spring, New York, December 24 at age 73.