Taylor Sheridan, 1883:

Come across any barbed wire yet? It's twisted steel wire with little barbs woven into it. Sharp as a knife's tip. It is the one fence cattle will not push through. They're going to carve this country into little rectangles. Then fence them off. And just like that, two of our great pleasures are gone.

Reviel Netz, Barbed Wire - An Ecology of Modernity:

Define, on the two-dimensional surface of the earth, lines across which motion is to be prevented, and you have one of the key themes of history. With a closed line (i.e., a curve enclosing a figure), and the prevention of motion from outside the line to its inside, you derive the idea of property. With the same line, and the prevention of motion from inside to outside, you derive the idea of prison. With an open line (i.e., a curve that does not enclose a figure), and the prevention of motion in either direction, you derive the idea of border. Properties, prisons, borders: it is through the prevention of motion that space enters history.