The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

by James Gleick

But wire was wire, and Claude Shannon was not the first to see this wide-ranging lattice as a potential communications grid. Thousands of farmers in remote places had the same idea. Unwilling to wait for the telephone companies to venture out from the cities, rural folk formed barbed-wire telephone cooperatives. They replaced metal staples with insulated fasteners. They attached dry batteries and speaking tubes and added spare wire to bridge the gaps. In the summer of 1895 The New York Times reported: “There can be no doubt that many rough-and-ready utilizations of the telephone are now being made. For instance, a number of South Dakota farmers have helped themselves to a telephone system covering eight miles of wire by supplying themselves with transmitters and making connections with the barb wire which constitutes the fence in that part of the country.”