Most readers will think instead of the Glidden’s Barb, patented in 1874, which has a single-strand wire with a smaller piece of wire with two sharpened ends wrapped around the strand.

In 1941, de Vitry and Oliver Bowles (of the U.S. Bureau of Mines) co-wrote a paper titled The Single-Strand Wire Saw, and in 1944, de Vitry co-wrote with Willis P. Mould (director of research at Rock ...