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The outbreak of World War I led to a revolution in modern warfare, and the use of barbed wire on the battlefield was one of the many technologies relied upon to hamper the enemy's attack. Used by American cattle ranchers since the 1870s, barbed wire was adapted on the Western Front to serve a more gruesome purpose than containing livestock. [2]
5.1 Formal end of the war. ... the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. [1] ... such as barbed wire, ...
World War I entanglements could in some places be tens of metres thick and several metres deep, with the entire space filled with a random, tangled mass of barbed wire. Entanglements were often not created deliberately, but by pushing together the mess of wire formed when conventional barbed wire fences had been damaged by artillery shells.
Rusted barbed wire in a roll. One fan wrote the inventor Joseph Glidden: it takes no room, exhausts no soil, shades no vegetation, is proof against high winds, makes no snowdrifts, and is both durable and cheap. [23] Barbed wire emerged as a major source of conflict with the so-called "Big Die Up" incident in the 1880s. This occurred because of ...
Jules-Louis Breton (1872-1940). The Breton-Prétot machine was a saw designed to cut the barbed wire protecting enemy trenches of World War I.The first version consisted of a small circular saw, driven by a six hp engine, attached to a long lever that was placed on a small cart with four wheels, that had to be pushed towards its objective.
Fields of barbed wire up to 100 yd (91 m) deep, were fixed with screw pickets in three belts 10–15 yd (9.1–13.7 m) wide and 5 yd (4.6 m) apart, in a zig-zag so that machine-guns could sweep the sides, placed in front of the trench system. Artillery observation posts and machine-gun nests were built in front of and behind the trench lines.
Earlier this month, Polish soldiers began laying coils of razor wire on the border with Kaliningrad, a part of Russian territory separated from the country and wedged between Poland and Lithuania.
In World War I the Bangalore torpedo was primarily used for clearing barbed wire before an attack. It could be used while under fire, from a protected position in a trench. The torpedo was standardized to consist of a number of externally identical 1.5 m (5 ft) lengths of threaded pipe, one of which contained the explosive charge.