Just because something has a known invention date of 1850, doesn't mean it was made in sufficient quantity to get into the archaeological record that year, decade, or even century. Historical archaeologists use technology dates, when they should be looking at discard dates (and cross-culturally). Research is showing that mass-produced items from the 1850s won't show up on archaeological sites until the 1870s or 1880s.
Now, as to the 1850s wire nail date. IT IS WRONG. Read below if you are interested......
The following is from my manuscript:
Machine Cut Nails and Wire Nails: American Production and Use for Dating 19th Century Sites
WILLIAM HAMPTON ADAMS
The rise of wire nails was dependent upon the broader technology of wire production. Once wire was made in quantity, then wire nails would become a common spin-off industry. The invention of barbed wire in 1873 and the production of wire nails ³probably accounted for the rapidity of the rise of wire² itself (Temin 1964:227). ³Wire had been made before steel became a mass-produced article, but the quantities had been small² up to 1890 (Temin 1964:226). So, while the development of a wire industry had to precede the mass production of the wire nail, in the end the wire nail‹and barbed wire‹stimulated further usages of wire.
Although mass-production would not happen until later in the 19th century, limited production actually began a half century earlier than most archaeologists think, based upon the usual literature. Patents for wire nails were first issued in France in 1806 (Fremont 1912:366-67). Wire nails were first produced in France in 1819 according to Fremont (1912:366), much earlier than the early 1850s usually ascribed in the archaeological literature (Fontana and Greenleaf 1962; Nelson 1968:9-10). One wire nail machine shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1844 and illustrated by Laboulaye (1845:Figure 549) consisted ³of a relatively sophisticated hand-cranked apparatus which cut, headed and pointed a nail from a coil of wire by a turn of the crank² (Priess 1973:88). Thus, one might expect that in French-settled portions of America, like Louisiana and Quebec, wire nails may be found in small quantities from 1819 onward. British patents for wire nails began in the 1850s (Priess and Shaugnessy 1972:17). The first production of wire nails in North America has had several claimants and these range from 1851-1875 (for details, see Priess 1973:88). In any case, wire nails in North America were not produced in significant quantities until the mid 1880s. The earliest American made wire nails were not used in building construction, being limited to use in making small items like cigar boxes and for packing crates made from soft woods (Priess 1973:88). ³American wire nail machinery was not really perfected until the 1860s and 70s² (Nelson 1968:10). The first American patent appeared in 1877 (Priess and Shaugnessy 1972:54).
³Wire nails were replacing cut nails for two reasons, their different shape and their dif-ferent material. Steel was of increasing qual-ity and cheapness; the price of steel nail plate probably fell below that of wrought-iron plate soon after the price of steel rails passed that of iron rails. And the round wire nails were found to be better than the square ones in addition, after some inventions in the 1880s, to being easier to make. They were widely criticized for their lack of holding power, but this was offset by their greater ability to penetrate wood without splitting it. They also weighed less than cut nails of equivalent length, which meant a larger number of nails in a pound and consequent lower freight charges. For these reasons, the production of cut nails reached a peak in 1886 and fell thereafter, and the production of wire rods for wire nails rose² (Temin 1964:227).
Based on information provided by the American Wire Nail Company, James M. Swank (1892:450-51) stated:
³Very great difficulty was experienced in in-ducing the hardware trade to recognize the wire brad and wire nail as a salable com-modity. From 1878 to 1880 the growth of the wire nail was very slow and was attend-ed with many difficulties. Deep rooted prej-udices of all kinds had to be overcome. It was not until the year 1883 or 1884 that the wire nail came into the market promi-nently as a competitor of the cut nail.²
³As the wire nail began to make inroads on the cut nail in the 1880¹s, manufacturers of cut nails took steps to regain as much of the lost trade as possible. Š They were able to demonstrate to their satisfaction that the cut nail was far superior. It had, they said, 75% to 100% greater holding power than the wire nail² (Hogan 1971:190). ³The nail manufacturing technique moved first from the iron cut nail to the steel cut nail and then to the steel wire nail. This change took place within the twenty year period from 1880 to 1900. At the beginning of this period both the steel cut nail and the wire nail were not produced in commercial quantities since both were introduced in 1882 or 1883² (Hogan 1971:188). The change to steel has been blamed on an 1885 iron puddler¹s strike in the Wheeling district but this strike probably only hastened slightly the inevitable transition (Hogan 1971:189). No figures exist for the 1882 to 1885 period of wire production, while the 1886-1890 figures are estimated, because the naileries were so secretive (Hogan 1971:189). ³The wire nail first appeared in considerable quantities in 1884² (Wright 1907:178). The market for wire nails rose rapidly thereafter. In 1884, one supply company in Portland, Oregon, listed only wire nails (Thompson, DeHart and Company 1884).
From the above discussion, we can draw the following conclusions regarding wire nails. Although patents were issued for wire nails as early as 1806, but were probably not in production until 1819. Wire nails could be present on a site in very small numbers after 1819 as part of shipping boxes and furniture, especially if these originated in France. Larger sizes (for architectural construction) would not be present until the 1850s (and probably much later). From ca. 1851-1883 wire nails may begin to accumulate in sites in small numbers, but were probably not used in building structures simply because so few were produced. Structures built before 1883 were built entirely, or almost entirely, of machine cut nails. On the other hand, structures built after about 1897 were most likely built using wire nails. Because the two major sources usually cited (Fontana and Greenleaf 1962; Nelson 1968:9-10) gave the 1850s as the start of wire nail production and the 1890s as the major transition to wire nails, many archaeologists assume that a site with both kinds of nails dates from the 1851-1890s period, especially if the two kinds are about evenly frequent (e.g., Orser, Nekola, and Roark 1987:558). What we must understand is that just because patents exist for a technology or a technology is known to date from a certain point onward, does not mean that those dates can be used for dating a site directly. Based on the available manufacturing data, very few buildings in the United States could have been built using wire nails prior to about 1883. In the United States, virtually all construction of frame buildings after about 1900 used wire nails almost exclusively. Because British naileries switched to wire nails in the 1860s and 1870s, well ahead of the American brethren, we would expect that British supplied colonies and former colonies, like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, would have earlier access to wire nails than in America. Import records in those places should establish the nail sources before trying to use wire nails for dating during this transitional period.
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William Hampton Adams
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