The History of Wire

Podcast Transcript

The modern world runs on metal wires.

These thin metal strands literally circle the globe and are responsible for much of the world’s electrical power and communications.

It is something so basic that most people never bother to stop and think about how wires are made.

It turns out wire has been made for thousands of years, although its uses have changed dramatically.

Learn more about wire, how it’s made, and its many uses on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The genesis for this episode comes from a simple question I had years ago.

How did people make wire?

I’m not a metalurgist and I’ve never tried my hand at being a blacksmith. However, I know the basic gist of how blacksmithing works. You heat a metal until it’s malleable and then hammer it into the shape you want, be it a sword or a horseshoe.

That is a vast oversimplification, but from a conceptual standpoint, that is pretty much how it works.

So I could understand how most basic objects could be made out of metal, but I had no clue how they could make wire. You couldn’t really hammer out a wire of uniform diameter. Likewise, it didn’t seem like you could really forge something so thin and fragile.

During my travels, I saw ancient objects in museums that had wire, so people clearly had been making and using wire for a long time, even before its modern uses were discovered.

So, my ignorance about how wire was made had a relatively simple answer. A method that was discovered thousands of years ago.

The earliest evidence of wire dates back to around 2000 BC in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. These early wires were typically made of precious metals such as gold and silver, hammered into thin strips and then rolled or twisted by hand into filaments. These wires were primarily used in jewelry, decoration, and ceremonial objects. The softness and malleability of these metals allowed artisans to work them without needing advanced tools.

So, my original thought that you couldn’t hammer out wire was both right and wrong. I was wrong insofar as you can hammer out wire for softer metals like gold and silver. It takes time, but it can be done.

However, I was right that it really wasn’t practical for harder metals like iron.

This hammering technique was only the beginning. In ancient Egypt and Sumeria, craftsmen developed a process known as drawing by hand, where a metal rod or strip was pulled through tapered holes in stones or hard materials to produce thinner strands.

Wire pulling is really the heart of the entire wire creation process, even to this day. It’s pretty simple, you take some metal and you pull it through a hole that is smaller than the metal. The hole squeezes the metal and ensures that the wire is of a consistent diameter.

To make thinner strands of wire, you just pull it through a smaller hole. This makes the same amount of wire thinner and longer.

Bronze and copper wires appeared later, and archaeological finds show their use in intricate woven patterns and decorative metalwork, particularly in the Mediterranean world and South Asia.

During the Greco-Roman period, wire-drawing techniques became more refined. The earliest known drawplates—tools with holes of diminishing sizes used to draw metal into wire—were developed in the Roman Empire. The Romans made wires of iron, bronze, gold, and silver, using them for fibulae (ancient brooches), chains, musical instruments (such as lyres), and even some structural applications.

However, the quality and uniformity of ancient wire remained inconsistent. Most production was artisanal and limited to small-scale use. Nevertheless, these methods laid the foundation for future improvements in mechanical wire production.

The Middle Ages saw significant advancements, particularly in the Islamic world and later in Europe. In the Islamic Golden Age, craftsmen improved metalworking techniques, and drawplates began to be more widely used with harder metals like steel. Artisans in India and the Middle East developed sophisticated methods for drawing fine gold and silver wire for use in textile embellishment.

In Europe, the production of wire expanded in the 13th and 14th centuries, especially in Germany and France. Nuremberg became an important center for wire production by the 14th century. The wire-drawing process became increasingly mechanized, with water-powered wire-drawing mills appearing by the late Middle Ages. These mills mechanized the pulling of metal through drawplates using large wheels and axles driven by flowing water, improving both the speed and consistency of production.

Wire was now used in musical instruments, sieves, pins, and even architectural reinforcement. However, there was one really important use that had been around for centuries that necessitated the need for all this wire: chain mail.

The history of chain mail is deeply intertwined with the development of metal wire, as the manufacture of this type of armor fundamentally depends on the ability to produce consistent, durable, and flexible metal rings.

Chain mail was not just a military innovation but also a metallurgical milestone that helped drive advances in wire-making technology throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Chain mail is believed to have originated with the Celts in Central Europe, around the 4th to 3rd century BC. Archaeological evidence, including chain mail shirts found in burial sites like the La Tène culture in modern-day Switzerland and Austria, points to the Celts as the earliest known users of this armor. The Greeks and later the Romans adopted and improved upon the design, calling it lorica hamata.

Early Celtic chain mail was crafted by painstakingly hammering iron or bronze into thin rods, then cutting and shaping them into rings. The rings were then riveted or butted together in a four-in-one pattern: each ring passing through four others. This design provided both flexibility and substantial protection against cutting blows, particularly from swords and arrows.

I should note that chain mail is still used today. It is used for safety purposes by people who have to manipulate sharp knives, such as butchers.

The Industrial Revolution fundamentally transformed wire manufacturing. In 1773, English ironmaster Samuel Walker introduced the continuous rolling mill, which could produce uniform iron rods for wire drawing much more efficiently than previous methods. This innovation dramatically reduced costs and increased production volumes.

The development of steam power in the late 18th century further revolutionized the industry. Steam-powered wire drawing machines could produce wire at unprecedented rates and with remarkable consistency. This mechanization enabled wire to become an industrial commodity rather than a specialty craft product.

Wire’s material composition also evolved during this period. In 1830, the first practical steel wire was produced, offering greater strength than iron wire. The Bessemer process, introduced in 1856, enabled mass production of steel, making steel wire economically viable for large-scale applications.

Drawplates were now made from hardened steel, allowing for the drawing of stronger metals. Lubrication techniques improved the ease and quality of drawing, and multiple successive drawing dies made it possible to produce extremely fine wires.

The development of metal cables made from multiple strands of wire emerged from the need for greater strength, flexibility, and durability than single solid wires could provide.

In 1831, German engineer Wilhelm Albert created the first wire rope for use in mining hoists in the Harz Mountains. His design twisted several strands of wrought iron wire into a helical pattern, creating a cable that was far more resilient and reliable than traditional hemp ropes or single metal rods.

The technology quickly spread. In 1840, American engineer John A. Roebling improved on Albert’s design by developing stronger, more flexible steel wire cables. Roebling’s wire rope became critical in building suspension bridges, including the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, where massive multi-strand steel cables supported the main span.

The gague system for classifying wires was developed in the 19th century. This system as originally very simple. The gague of a wire was based on the number of times it was pulled, so a thinner wire had a higher gague number.

Today, thinner wires still have a higher gague number, but the math behind it is incredibly complicated. It uses a logrithim with a base of 92, which makes absolutely no sense to me. It seems like it would just be easier to give the width in milimeters.

The 19th century saw wire becoming essential to modern communication. In 1844, Samuel Morse’s telegraph system relied on copper wire to transmit messages across vast distances. Telegraph wires soon spanned continents, fundamentally changing the speed and scope of human communication. By 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line connected the eastern and western United States.

The demand for wire only increased in the later half of the 19th century.

Barbed wire which was invented in the United States in the 1870s, consisted of strands of drawn steel wire twisted together with sharp barbs attached at intervals. Its development was made possible by advances in wire-drawing technology, which allowed for the mass production of durable, uniform steel wire. Barbed wire offered a cheap, effective, and easy-to-install method of enclosing large tracts of land, particularly in the American West, where traditional wooden fencing was impractical.

I’ve previously done an episode on barbed wire and I’ll refer to you that for more information.

The telephone, patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, created further demand for copper wire. As telephone networks expanded globally, copper wire production soared to meet the growing need for reliable communication infrastructure. Wire manufacturing techniques had to evolve to meet increasingly exacting specifications for electrical conductivity and resistance.

The late 19th century also saw wire becoming essential to electrical power distribution. Thomas Edison’s first electrical power network in 1882 relied on copper wire to deliver electricity to homes and businesses. As electrification spread, wire became the literal connection between power generation and consumption, enabling the modern electrical age.

The early 20th century witnessed remarkable diversification in wire types and applications. The automotive industry created enormous demand for steel wire in tire reinforcement, springs, and control cables. The Wright brothers’ first successful aircraft in 1903 relied on wire for structural bracing and control systems, establishing wire’s critical role in early aviation.

Cable, aka wire rope, continued to revolutionize mining, construction, and transportation. Ever larger suspension bridges spanning previously impossible distances became feasible thanks to high-strength wire cables.

World Wars I and II drove further innovations in wire manufacturing. High-tensile steel wire for aircraft control cables, specialized alloy wires for military communications, and resistance wires for electrical applications all saw rapid development under wartime pressures. Manufacturing processes became more standardized and quality control more rigorous.

After World War II, wire manufacturing became increasingly sophisticated. The basic process remained drawing metal through progressively smaller dies, but the equipment, materials, and control systems transformed completely. Modern wire production typically begins with hot rolling metal into rod form, followed by acid cleaning to remove scale and oxides.

Cold drawing, where the metal is pulled through diamond or tungsten carbide dies without heating, enables precise control of dimensions and mechanical properties. Multiple drawing operations with intermediate heating to relieve internal stresses produce wire with specific characteristics for particular applications. Computer-controlled drawing machines can maintain tolerances measured in micrometers.

As electronic devices miniaturized, wire dimensions shrank accordingly. By the 1970s, wire manufacturers were producing ultra-fine wire for integrated circuits and microelectronic applications, with diameters measured in thousandths of a millimeter. These microscopic wires required entirely new manufacturing approaches and quality control methods.

You might never think about the humble metal wire, but an enormous part of our modern world is dependent on it. All of our modern electrical devices, comunication systems, transportation, and modern engineering is dependent on wire at some level.

All of this is built upon techniques developed thousands of years ago by ancient people who could never have guessed the way wire would eventually be used for.

…and it all comes from pulling a piece of metal through a very small hole.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Today’s review comes from listener Dane Hood over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write.

A good 30% of the stuff I know is from this podcast.

My dad showed me maybe 7 months ago, and I have listened to 1000. I do it in the car when I wake up and when I shower. And I am smarter than all the other 5th graders in overall knowledge now.

Keep making them, please.

Thanks, Dane! I tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll keep making them if you keep listening.

Also, if you keep listening, then I think we can bump that number up from 30%.

Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you, too, can have it read on the show.