The history of barbed wire and egoza
| In 1863, blacksmith Michael Kelly developed the first version of barbed wire - in 1868 he patented his invention, which consisted of two twisted wires with a flat double-sided barb strung on one of the wires. |
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| In late 1872, Illinois farmer Henry Rose began attaching planks with pointed pieces of wire to the horns of cows . When a cow ran into a wire fence, the pointed pieces of wire stuck into her head, and she moved away from the fence. Henry Rose decided that it would be much more efficient to attach boards with pointed pieces of wire directly to the wire fence itself. So he came up with barbed wire, a new kind of livestock fencing that was used to fence railroad tracks. He patented this barbed wire in May 1873 and demonstrated it during the summer at an agricultural show in DeKalb, Illinois. |  |
| The exhibition was attended by Isaac Ellwood, Joseph Glidden and Jacob Haysh. They continued to work on improving the design. And in 1874, several patents were issued at once, among which Joseph Glidden 's patent was recognized as the best, which consisted of two wires twisted together, one of which was wound with a piece of wire with two pointed ends. |
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| Isaac Ellwood also patented a new type of barbed wire that year, but admitted that Glidden's patent was better than his. According to other sources, Glidden made spikes with a coffee grinder and wrapped them around the wire. To prevent the spikes from moving, Glidden wrapped them with another wire. |
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In 1899-1902, during the Anglo-Boer War, barbed wire was first used as anti-personnel barriers.
In 1904-1905, the Russian army for the first time, during the Russo-Japanese War, connected electric current to barbed obstacles.
Barbed tape was invented in Germany during World War I as a last resort in the face of wire shortages. In addition, it took up little space, but was inferior in efficiency to barbed wire - it can be easily cut with scissors.
Barbed tape was simply stamped out of metal tape and did not have a wire core.
Such a tape was more difficult to cut with wire cutters, but it was unstable against metal shears and weaker in breaking.
Since the 1970s, unreinforced barbed tape has been widely used in fencing prisons and hospitals for the mentally ill.
Since 1981, they began to reinforce the barbed tape with wire . This was the subject of a patent dispute between the Man Barrier and Razor Ribbon brands.
The latter influenced the modern name for razor barbed wire in the English-language variant Razor Barbed Wire .
Reinforced barbed tape began to be widely used for military purposes, since unreinforced barbed tape could be easily cut with scissors.
Reinforced barbed tape is almost impossible to cut with scissors or bite with pliers without a special tool.
In 1982-1986, the 15th CENTRAL RESEARCH AND TESTING INSTITUTE OF THE USSR MINISTRY OF DEFENSE carried out research work on the topic " EGOZA ". The result of this work is the invention of products: barbed barrier tape - steel reinforced (KLZ-SA); machine for its manufacture I-1641.
So they began to call the spiral barbed obstacles in the former Soviet Union - Egoza.
Around this time, the production of barbed tape obstacles began to develop in the USSR and in Ukraine in particular. The production of barbed spiral barriers was concentrated in prisons. Egoza was mainly produced from twisted barbed tape, which was produced on the "Samshit" machine. At the end of the last and at the beginning of this century, Ukrainian manufacturers mastered the production of egoza from reinforced barbed tape.
At the beginning of the new millennium in Russia, mass patenting of reinforced barbed tape began, as well as the names: Egoza, Bruno spiral, Concertina, which have long been used to designate the name of the barbed spiral barrier of their reinforced barbed tape, machines for the production of Egoza.
At the same time, in most cases, products invented earlier by other people were patented, but there are also own developments.
In the same period, various types of egoza began to be sold under trademarks: razor barbed wire Kazachka and others.
In 2008, inventors appeared in Ukraine, who, by obtaining patents for reinforced barbed tape, also questioned the authorship of the 1981 inventors.
This is not the first and not the last case in the history of mankind when, with the help of patents, individuals try either to monopolize the market or to get additional profit from existing manufacturers.